Unitarianism Defended - A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting

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Title: Unitarianism Defended - A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting - Ministers of Liverpool
Author: Martineau, James, Giles, Henry, Thom, John Hamilton
Language: English
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UNITARIANISM DEFENDED:

A SERIES OF LECTURES

THREE PROTESTANT DISSENTING MINISTERS
OF LIVERPOOL:

IN REPLY TO

A COURSE OF LECTURES, ENTITLED “UNITARIANISM
CONFUTED,” BY THIRTEEN CLERGYMEN OF
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

--------------------------------------------------

Would to Heaven that Christians had their own ‘vail’ of orthodox words
taken away from their minds; that, limiting Orthodoxy to the acceptance
of the Christ as the SPIRIT (‘the Lord is that Spirit,’ says St. Paul),
_i.e._, the meaning, the end of all revelation, they would not allow a
new _letter_, consisting of abstract doctrines, to involve their minds
in a ‘vail’ which obstructs the view of the Gospel, even more than the
old letter, which kept the Jews in “bondage.”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy by
Rev. J. Blanco White_, p. 53, 2nd edition.

--------------------------------------------------

LIVERPOOL:
WILLMER AND SMITH, 32, CHURCH STREET.

LONDON:
JOHN GREEN, 121, NEWGATE STREET.

-----

1839.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LONDON:
PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

GENERAL PREFACE.

In this Preface, and in all the other contents of this volume, we have
occupied the position of an assailed party, lending our best
consideration to whatever a leagued body of resolute and unsparing
adversaries could say against us. We have stood upon the defensive, not
lamenting that such an occasion had occurred of exposing our views of
Christianity to so severe a scrutiny, and of displaying to the world
whether our position was tenable. We did not provoke this Controversy.
It was of our opponents’ choosing. They entered into combination, and
arranged their method of attack, and invited the public attentively to
look on while they performed upon us the work of destruction. With
respectful attention, as men whose system of Christianity was about to
be subjected to a powerful analysis by those who believed the main
ingredients to be poisonous,—but with quiet hearts, as men who had no
interest in this world but to discover Truth,—we have interfered no
further than was necessary to make this examination, by carefulness,
impartiality, and accuracy, productive of a true result. We have struck
out whatever was untrue, and we have supplied whatever was wanting, to
exhibit a full statement of the respective Evidences of Unitarianism and
of Trinitarianism. Lecture qualifies lecture; and Preface corrects
Preface. We are satisfied to have thus placed, side by side, the
contrasted views of Man and God, and to await the issues.

To return upon the “thirteen Clergymen of the Church of England” the
words of their General Preface, (p. xi.) “_it is no uncommon practice in
modern criticism to neglect the statements_” of an opponent’s case, as
if they never had been made, and the corrections passed upon one’s own
as if they never had been experienced. It is the policy of the “thirteen
Clergymen” to _reiterate_, nothing daunted, arguments, our careful
replies to which are not even noticed, and misrepresentations whose
injustice had solemnly been protested against. By these resolute
repetitions some are seduced to believe, and attention is withdrawn from
the overthrow of an error or a calumny by the hardihood with which it
rises from its fall, and reasserts itself. Strike them down;—they get
up, and coolly offer themselves to be struck down again. Great ought to
be the power of Truth; for great is the vitality and the power of
effrontery in a popular error. It is only in the long combat of years
and generations that the _Real_ manifests at last its imperishable
quality. The “General Preface” quietly gathers up all the “_disjecta
membra_” of error and misstatement, and without a word of answer to our
analysis of their character, presents them again to have sentence and
execution passed upon them. It is a careful redintegration of the broken
particles, which in our simplicity we had hoped would not so readily
reunite. We are obliged, therefore, by way at once of Preface and of
Protest, to repeat our solemn contradiction of some most strenuous
misrepresentations, and to attempt again the exposure of some fallacies
most tenacious of life.

I. It was distinctly stated by us in the course of this Controversy,
that not upon any grounds of _literary evidence_ did we discredit those
prefaces which relate to the miraculous (or as, in insult to the purest
and holiest human feelings, our opponents are not ashamed to call it,
the _immaculate_) conception; and that our estimate of them was formed
solely upon grounds of inherent incredibility, and of proved
inconsistencies both with themselves and with the general statements of
the New Testament. Yet in total disregard of this our denial, the
Preface (p. xiii.) reasserts the charge, as if it never had been
contradicted. We also distinctly stated that the miraculous conception
_in no way interfered with Unitarianism_,—that many Humanitarians
believed in it; yet it is _the policy_ of Trinitarianism to _repeat_,
that we pervert these portions of Scripture, for the sake of evading a
fact fatal to our system. Unitarianism is so little concerned to evade
the fact of a miraculous conception, that many Unitarians themselves
adopt it. It is the “tactics” of the “thirteen Clergymen,” their system
“of holy war,” (_see Preface to Mr. Ould’s Lecture_) to ignore whatever
we may say on our own behalf, either in way of correction or of defence,
and to reassert the false statement.

II. The “Unitarian Creed” is described by our reverend opponents as “_a
mere code of unbelief_” (p. xiv.) it being the policy of the “thirteen
Clergymen,” not only to pay no regard to our most solemn assertion of
our faith in Christianity, as God’s full and perfect revelation to man,
but also to assume to themselves the functions of infallible judges of
what is Christianity, and what is not; and so, again to return upon them
their own language, to “deify their own fallible” (p. xii.)
interpretations and inferences. Yet they can impose upon the simplicity
of the world, by charging others with the “pride of reason.” Infallible
themselves, to differ from their infallibility can of course be nothing
else than the _pride_ of reason.

III. It is stated (p. xv.), that we “utterly deny” “the eternity of
punishments,” without adding _what we have added_, that the moral
consequences of actions _are eternal_, and that in its influence on
character and progress, the retribution of every evil thought or deed
_is everlasting_. What we _do_ deny, as the blackest misrepresentation
that can be conceived of the God of Providence, whose glory it is to
lead his children to Himself, is the horribly distinct statement of
their own “General Preface”—“_that the sufferings of the lost are not
intended for their amendment, but as a satisfaction to divine justice,
when the hour of pardon shall have passed away_.” (p. xv.) Is this the
Religion, and this the God, of Love? These are the men who make the
Unbelief of which they afterwards so blindly and bitterly complain. If
such was Christianity, unbelief would be a virtue, a prompting of
devotion, a protest on behalf of God.

IV. Our doubt as to the existence of, or necessity for, an external
Devil, permitted by God to ruin the souls of men, has been converted to
two uses in this Preface;—first, as manifesting that we are ourselves
under the power of the subtlest device of Satan, who has concealed from
us his existence, that he might lead us captive at his will; and,
secondly, that though denying the existence of Satan, we are yet
ourselves the emissaries of Satan; for that as the Devil tempted Eve,
and our Lord himself, by perversions of the Word of God, so
Unitarianism, by its interpretations, is his present instrument,—in
fact, Satan himself tempting the world by the word of God, as of old he
tempted Eve and Christ. (pp. xv. xvi.) We leave this matter to the
judgment of men whose sense of propriety and decency has not been
borrowed exclusively from the influences of a dogmatic Theology.

V. It is said of us (p. xvi.), contrary to our own most distinct
averment in this very Controversy, that “according to the theologians of
this unhappy school, it seems to be almost a fundamental rule, that no
doctrine ought to be acknowledged as true in its nature, or divine in
its origin, of which all the parts are not level to human understanding:
and that whatever the Scriptures teach concerning the counsels of
Jehovah, and the plan of his salvation, must be modified, curtailed, and
attenuated, in such a manner, by the transforming power of art and
argument, as to correspond with the poor and narrow capacities of our
intelligence.”

Where are the simplicity, the sincerity, the love of Truth, which alone
can make Controversy fruitful of good results, when such a
representation of the spirit of our Theology _can_ be given by “thirteen
Clergymen” _after_ we had published the following words in our fifth
Lecture (p. 9), for their special instruction:—“Let me guard myself from
the imputation of rejecting this doctrine _because it is mysterious_; or
of supporting a system which insists on banishing all mysteries from
religion. On any such system I should look with unqualified aversion, as
excluding from faith one of its primary elements; as obliterating the
distinction between logic and devotion, and tending only to produce an
irreverent and narrow-minded dogmatism. ‘Religion without mystery’ is a
combination of terms, than which the Athanasian Creed contains nothing
more contradictory; and the sentiment of which it is the motto, I take
to be a fatal caricature of rationalism, tending to bring all piety into
contempt. Until we touch upon the mysterious, we are not in contact with
religion; nor are any objects reverently regarded by us, except such as,
from their nature or their vastness, are felt to transcend our
comprehension.” Nay, it is not a little remarkable, that the very
illustration employed by the “thirteen Clergymen” to exhibit our
absurdity in rejecting the incomprehensible, had been previously
employed by ourselves to exhibit the necessity of admitting the
incomprehensible:—

_Trinitarian Preface_, p. xviii. _Unitarian Lecture_, No. V. p. 9.

“Much of the great mystery of “The sense of what we do not know
godliness, God manifest in the is as essential to our religion,
flesh, with all the firmament of as the impression of what we do
saving truth and love, whereof know; the thought of the
it is the radiant centre, must boundless, the incomprehensible,
remain inexplicable to our must blend in our mind with the
present capacities. But to argue perception of the clear and true;
from thence, that this mystery the little knowledge we have must
is a cunningly-devised fable, is be clung to, as the margin of an
as illogical as it would be to invisible immensity; _and all our
maintain _that there is no positive ideas be regarded as the
bottom to the sea, because we mere float to show the surface of
have no plumb-line with which it the infinite deep_.”
may be fathomed_.”

This is bold misrepresentation; a consistent hardihood in the “tactics
of holy war.” To persevere, against all remonstrance, in the repetition
of a misstatement injurious to an opponent, and to do this so coolly as
to use almost his own words in imputing to him the very opposite of what
he has said, is at least a convenient, if not an honourable nor yet a
formidable policy.

In the same spirit of neither honourable nor yet formidable policy, is
the attempt (p. xvii.) to identify Mahometanism and Unitarianism, by the
help of a literary forgery, which even if it was authentic, would prove
nothing except that the early Unitarians of England, in the reign of
Charles the Second, amid the corruptions of Christianity, rejoiced in
the testimony borne by Mahometanism to the great doctrine of revealed
religion, the Unity of God. It is said that there is, among the MSS. in
the Lambeth Library, a “Socinian Epistle (to this effect) to Ameth Ben
Ameth, Ambassador from the Emperor of Morocco to Charles II.” Leslie, in
the Preface to his “Socinian Controversy Discussed,” was the first who
made use of this supposed letter, and not without the suspicion, that he
had first forged it himself.[1] “I will here,” says Leslie, “present the
reader with a rarity, which I take to be so, because of the difficulty I
had to obtain it.” “It is in my mind,” says Mr. Aspland, “decisive of
the question, that immediately after Leslie had published the Epistle,
Emlyn, who answered the tract to which it was prefixed, stated it as his
belief, upon inquiry, that no such epistle had ever been presented by
any one ‘deputed’ from the Unitarians, and insinuated that no credit was
to be given to a document published by Leslie, unless vouched by some
other authority than his own; and that Leslie, in replying to this
answer, though he dwells, for pages, upon the passages before and after
this, relating to the epistle, says not a syllable about his ‘rarity’ or
in defence of his veracity.” “Leslie,” continues Mr. Aspland, “is
convicted (by Emlyn) of quoting passages from Archbishop Tillotson’s
Sermons, which had been published in the name of their eminent author,
as if they were the work of an avowed ‘Socinian.’ And if you will
consult his reply, you will find this theological braggart completely
humbled, and reduced to the necessity of using the wretched plea, that
he had omitted the name of the ‘great Prelate,’ out of _tenderness_.—Is
it uncharitable to suspect, under all these circumstances, that he who
was proved to have resorted to one trick, might have had recourse to
another?”

“As to your ‘rarity,’” says Emlyn in his reply to Leslie, “of the
address to the _Morocco_ ambassador, I see not what it amounts to, more
than a complaint of the corruption of the Christian faith, in the
article of one God, which the _Mahometans_ have kept, by consent of all
sides. Yet, forasmuch as I can learn nothing from any _Unitarians_ of
any such address from them, nor do you produce any subscribers’
names,[2] I conclude no such address was ever made, by any _deputed_
from them, whatever any single person might do. I suppose you conclude
from the matter of it, that it must be from some _Unitarian_, and
perhaps so; yet you may remember that so you concluded from the matter
of Dr. _Tillotson’s_ Sermons, that they were a _Socinian’s_.”[3]

For our own part, when we read this amusing attempt to identify us with
Mahometans, by the help of an unknown letter, bearing no subscription,
and addressed, by nobody knows whom, to the _Ambassador of Morocco_, in
the reign of Charles II., we were forcibly reminded of two passages in
Ecclesiastical History, in whose pages all tricks and absurdities can be
paralleled, and whose exhibition of gratuitous follies and distortions
has left the possibility of “nothing new under the sun,” of this
description, for our modern days. Hildebrand himself, yes, GREGORY THE
SEVENTH, like our poor selves, was suspected of a leaning to
“_Islamism_,” (_General Preface_, p. xvii.) because he wrote a letter,
not to the Ambassador, as in our case but, as became his greater
dignity, to the _Emperor_ of Morocco, thanking him for the liberation of
some Christian captives, and expressing his conviction, so much was
there of the spirit of God and goodness in this act, “that they both
worshipped the same spirit, though the modes of their adoration and
faith were different.” It also appears that the Emperor Manuel Comnenus
exposed himself to the same imputation of “_Islamism_,” because he
wished to correct an error in the ritual of the Greek Church, which by a
laughable misunderstanding of an Arabic word, signifying _eternal_,
“contained a standing anathema against the God of Mahomet,” as being
“_solid_ and _spherical_.”

“Solventur risu tabulæ; tu missus abibis.”

We confess our unmixed astonishment at finding the “thirteen Clergymen”
avowing the most undisguised Tritheism. We do not recollect in modern
times so bold and unwary an admission of Polytheism as the following:
“Our inability, therefore, to explain the Triunity of his Essence, can
be no reason for rejecting the revelation of it contained in his Word;
even if we were deprived of those shadows and resemblances of this
divine truth, which may be seen in the one nature of man, communicating
itself to many individuals of the species. _There is one human nature,
but many human persons._” (p. xix.) Is this then the _Unity_ of God
which the “thirteen” maintain, viz., such a unity as subsists between
three individual men? Is it their meaning that the Divine Nature is a
Species containing under it three Individuals, as human nature is a
species containing under it as many individuals as there are men? Do
they mean to contend, with some of the Fathers, that three men are only
“_abusively_” called _three_, being in reality only _one_? What mercy
would Dr. Whately have for such unskilful controversialists? Is this
however the deliberate view of the whole thirteen, or is it only the
rashness of one of them?—for it is very important to have so definite a
statement of what is meant by the Trinity in Unity.

VI. It is most incorrectly stated (_Preface_, p. xx.) that “Dr.
Priestley, Mr. Lindsey, Mr. Belsham, not to mention earlier writers,
have laboured hard to show that the Fathers of the first three centuries
were Unitarians, _and believers in the simple humanity of Jesus
Christ_.” Such a labour was never undertaken by these writers, nor by
any one else. It is capable of proof that the Fathers of the three first
centuries were _not_ Trinitarian in the Athanasian sense; but that they
were believers in the simple _humanity_ of the Christ, no one maintains,
from the time that Platonism first began to transform Christianity into
harmony with its own peculiar ideas. That Unitarians have supported this
view by “hardy misquotations,” is, to say the least of it, an unwise
provocation from men who have in the course of this Controversy been
convicted of the most careless misquotations both in their own case
(_see especially preface to the Seventh Unitarian Lecture_), and in that
of their favourite Champion (_see the Appendix to the Sixth Unitarian
Lecture_). That the substantial statements of Unitarians as to the
Unitarianism of the primitive Church have been overturned by Bull, &c.,
(_Trinitarian preface_, p. xxi.) is a hardy assertion in the face of the
following quotations from Bull himself: “In the FIRST and BEST ages, the
Churches of Christ directed all their prayers ACCORDING TO THE
SCRIPTURES, TO GOD ONLY, _through_ the alone mediation of Jesus
Christ.”—_Answer to a Query of the Bishop of Meaux_, p. 295.

“The Father is rightly styled THE WHOLE, as he is the fountain of
divinity: For the divinity which is in the _Son_ and in the _Holy
Ghost_, is the _Father’s_, because it is DERIVED FROM THE
FATHER.”—_Defence_, sect. ii. 8.

For another quotation from Bishop Bull, see also preface, p. vi., to the
Seventh Unitarian Lecture.

VII. The “thirteen Clergymen,” finding that Mr. Belsham’s “Improved
Version” was not a STANDARD with us, and knowing perhaps that in our
rejection of it as such we have been borne out by the Unitarian
Association at its recent general meeting in London, yet determined to
find a standard for us somewhere, have (p. xxvi.) put into our mouths,
with marvellous naïveté, an appeal to Mr. Belsham’s Translation of St.
Paul’s Epistles. We have already given up the Mr. Belsham of the
Improved Version, and they, for their own easy purposes, represent us as
making an appeal to the Mr. Belsham of “the Epistles.” We will yield to
our reverend opponents whatever consolation they may be able to derive
from their _imaginary_ triumph, in case we made this _imaginary_ appeal.
The Trinitarians cannot divest their minds of the idea that we must have
an Authority _somewhere_. They cannot understand what is meant by
deferring to principles alone; by having no external judge of
Controversies, no shorter road to conclusions, than to submit every
question to the fullest light that Knowledge and Inquiry have provided,
or may yet provide. The Cæsar to whom we appeal from Mr. Belsham is not
some other Mr. Belsham, or the same man in a different book, but the
great principles of Criticism and of Interpretation, as recognized by
competent judges of all parties.

VIII. For the faith of the Church of England, the “thirteen Clergymen”
declare, that “it is alike their privilege and obligation to contend in
that spirit of charity which becomes a believer in Jesus.” (_Preface_,
p. xxviii.) We shall not open former wounds, but look simply to some of
their last manifestations of “Charity” in their General Preface.

1. They say of us (p. xxiii.), that “Unitarians have borne some such
proportion to the Christian Church, as monsters bear to the species of
which they are unhappy distortions.”

2. They “_decline to receive us as brethren, and to give us the right
hand of fellowship_” partly because our doctrinal views of Christianity
are different from their own, and partly because, as they aver, we
maintain our views in _dishonesty_, using language _hypocritically_. We
“cannot be Christian brethren,” say they, “for we cannot tread the same
road, even for an instant. They use the _language_ of Christianity,
without believing its _mysteries_. How, then, can we bid them God speed,
while they are influenced by this spirit of unfairness? ‘The words of
their mouth are smoother than butter, but war is in their heart: their
words are softer than oil, yet are they drawn swords.’” (pp. xxiv. xxv.)

3. We are charged with deliberately opposing our own minds to the mind
of God. “That such unwearied hostility,” say they, “is waged by
Unitarians _against the mind of God_, as expressed in his word, all
their publications unequivocally and mournfully attest.” (p. xxv.)

4. They describe us as “blasphemers against the Son of Man,” and they
close this peculiar exhibition of “Charity” by offering up for us the
following prayer:—

“_O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou
hast made, nor wouldest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should
be converted, and live, have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and
Heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and
contempt of thy word_,” &c. (p. xxix.)

If such is their “Charity,” may we be permitted to ask, what form would
their _uncharitableness_ take?

Such is the “General Preface,” which the “thirteen Clergymen” are
deliberately of opinion that the issues of this Controversy, and our
mutual relations to each other, justified them in writing. We confess
that we had prepared ourselves for a careful attempt, on their part, at
repairing whatever further inquiry, and, we may say without presumption,
the close scrutiny of an opponent, had shown to be weak or imperfect in
their previous labours,—a last effort to present again the edifice of
their faith in what they deemed its most favourable lights, accompanied
by a corresponding attempt to shake the foundations of Unitarian
Christianity. They have thought themselves, however, sufficiently strong
already to be able to throw away this last opportunity. They deem the
work already done, and that they have earned the right, without further
addition or defence, to entitle their Lectures “_Unitarianism
Confuted_.”

By their own act they entered with us into this Controversy; they
repeatedly recognized us during its continuance as the persons whom they
were opposing, and whose Theology they had undertaken to refute;—yet our
careful and respectful examination of _their_ views, and statement of
our own, have not been able to win from them one word either of notice
or reply. However low their opinion may be of us, as of antagonists
beneath their consideration, yet surely in an attack on Unitarianism in
Liverpool, we are the persons whose views and influence they had most
occasion to correct; and if no more respectful feeling, mere expediency,
a regard for their own designs against Unitarianism, would seem to
require some examination of the arguments and doctrines of those who are
its Ministers and interpreters in the place where this attempt at its
overthrow has been made.

In abandoning this last occasion of a careful and elaborately
strengthened restatement of their case, we confess they have
disappointed us. Nor do we believe that even that part of the public
which has most sympathies with them, and would most rejoice in their
success, will contemplate the omission without surprise.

The origin and history of this Controversy is sufficiently detailed in
the annexed Correspondence. It will there be seen how our desire for a
really close and decisive examination of the several points at issue
between us has been evaded: our reverend opponents would not admit of
any controversy of which declamation was not to be the instrument.

We have already stated at the opening of this Controversy, that we did
not enter into this discussion for the sake of a Sectarian triumph, but
in the more Christian hope of exposing and checking the Sectarian
Spirit. To exalt the _spiritual_ character of Faith above the verbal and
metaphysical,—to unite mankind through their common love and acceptance
of Christ’s goodness and of Christ’s God,—to make his Church one by
their participation of one spirit, even the spirit of the life of
Jesus,—has been our highest aim, not only on this particular occasion,
but throughout all our Ministry. We acknowledge it to be an aim that,
indirectly at least, is destructive of “Orthodoxy,” that is, of “the
supposed attainableness of Salvation only by one particular set of
Opinions,” for if the love of Christ’s God, and the prayerful seeking
after Christ’s goodness are sufficient to place us on the way of
everlasting Safety, then the question is virtually decided, for no man
will follow Orthodoxy _gratuitously_. It is necessary to set it forth as
the _only_ escape from Hell,—else no man would burden himself with it.
And thus Orthodoxy is condemned to be damnatory. Intolerance is the very
condition of its existence. Cursing is its breath of life. Let it
acknowledge that the pure heart, and the pure life, and the spirit of
faith in God, may save a soul from death, _and Orthodoxy will have
dissolved itself_, for nothing but the last necessity, the
attainableness of safety by no other means, could justify its existence.
A damnatory creed must be an _essential_ of Salvation;—else it is the
greatest impiety possible to conceive. Was it, then, the intention of
Jesus to establish a certain _Creed_ breathing curses against all who do
not _think_[4] alike,—however they may love and live? Alas! why, then,
was not that merciful being as distinct as the Athanasian Creed? If
Jesus had been charged with the delivery of an exclusive Creed, as the
_only_ instrument of Salvation, would he have veiled it from the eyes of
those he came to save? Need we pursue the argument further? Orthodoxy is
_not Christianity_;—yet that in Orthodox bosoms the Spirit of Christ may
dwell, we are not the persons to deny.

What interest or value can these disputations have for beings whose main
business in this world is, in the prospect of a coming world, to conform
their souls to the image of the heavenly model, to Jesus the pattern of
citizenship in the new Heavens and the new Earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness! “Whilst we are wrangling here in the dark,” says Baxter,
“_we are dying_, and passing to the world that will decide all our
Controversies, and the safest passage thither is by peaceable holiness.”
Whilst we are struggling for points, of which we know little or nothing,
hearts are dead or perishing. Whilst we are battling for our conceits,
we are all of us unsound within, not right with God, and falling away
from the true service of our great master. Whilst proclaiming in
Sectarian eagerness, “Lo, Christ is here,” and “Lo, Christ is _not_
there,”—none of us are sitting at his feet, and submitting our souls and
passions to his yoke. Whilst we are falling out by the way, in vain his
heavenly invitation is addressed to our unquiet hearts—“Come unto me all
ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye
shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is
light.”

Footnote 1:

See “A Plea for Unitarian Dissenters,” pp. 88-9, published in 1813, by
the Rev. Robert Aspland, from whom we take the exposure of this
forgery now brought forth again; for in Trinitarian Controversy
falsehood seems immortal, and there is no work for us modern
advocates, except to “slay the slain.”

Footnote 2:

“There is internal evidence of its being written in the way of banter.
No subscription appears to it, and no person is named as concerned in
it, but a Monsieur Verze, a Frenchman, who might be employed as an
_agent_, and yet not be a ‘Socinian’ agent.”—ASPLAND.

Footnote 3:

Plea for Unitarian Dissenters, p. 137.

“My Lords, if your Lordships attended to the manner in which that
quotation is introduced into Leslie, you might see that it bore
internal evidence of being something of the nature of a _jeu
d’esprit_.... My Lords, this Leslie was a general maligner.... I
really think that this is raking into a dunghill to produce this
address to the Ambassador of the Emperor of Morocco.”—_The
Attorney-General before_ THE HOUSE OF LORDS _in the Lady Hewley
Appeal_, June 28th, 1839.

Footnote 4:

“He therefore that will be saved, must thus _think_ of the
Trinity.”—_Athanasian Creed._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS.

GENERAL PREFACE.

PUBLIC CORRESPONDENCE.

_LECTURE I._

THE PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

_BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM._

“Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we preach, warning every man,
and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man
perfect in Christ Jesus.”—_Colossians_ i. 27, 28.

“And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in
privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that
they might bring us into bondage; to whom we gave place by
subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might
continue with you.”—_Galatians_ ii. 4, 5.

_LECTURE II._

THE BIBLE: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.

_BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU._

“And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his
glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of
grace and truth.”—_John_ i. 14.

_LECTURE III._

CHRISTIANITY NOT THE PROPERTY OF CRITICS AND SCHOLARS; BUT THE GIFT OF
GOD TO ALL MEN.

_BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM._

“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined
in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.”—2 _Cor._ iv. 6.

_LECTURE IV._

“THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST
JESUS.”

_BY REV. HENRY GILES._

“There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus.”—1 _Tim._ ii. 5.

_LECTURE V._

THE PROPOSITION “THAT CHRIST IS GOD,” PROVED TO BE FALSE FROM THE JEWISH
AND THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES.

_BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU._

“For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth
(as there be gods many, and lords many,) but to us there is but one
God, _the Father_, of whom all are things, and we in him; and one
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”—1 _Cor._
viii. 5, 6.

_LECTURE VI._

THE SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION INCONSISTENT WITH ITSELF, AND THE
CHRISTIAN IDEA OF SALVATION.

_BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU._

“Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name
under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”—_Acts_ iv.
12.

_LECTURE VII._

THE UNSCRIPTURAL ORIGIN AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF
THE TRINITY.

_BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM._

“The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”—_John_ xiv. 10.

_LECTURE VIII._

MAN, THE IMAGE OF GOD.

_BY REV. HENRY GILES._

“For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the
image and glory of God.”—1 _Cor._ xi. 7.

“And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my
father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I
will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him,—Father, I have
sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be
called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.”—_Luke_ xv.
17-19.

_LECTURE IX._

THE COMFORTER, EVEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH, WHO DWELLETH IN US, AND
TEACHETH ALL THINGS.

_BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM._

“If ye love me, keep my commandments: and I will pray the Father, and he
shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for
ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive,
because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for
he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you
comfortless; I will come to you.”—_John_ xiv. 15-18.

_LECTURE X._

CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH; THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY.

_BY REV. HENRY GILES._

“Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”—_Rom._ xiv. 5.

_LECTURE XI._

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL.

_BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU._

“Woe unto them that say, ... let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel
draw nigh and come, that we may know it; woe unto them that call evil
good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for
darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”—_Isaiah_
v. 18-20.

_LECTURE XII._

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF RETRIBUTION HEREAFTER.

_BY REV. HENRY GILES._

“And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And
he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. Then said the Lord,
Thou hast pity on the gourd for which thou hast not laboured, neither
madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night. And
should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than
six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right
hand and their left hand?”—_Jonah_ iv. 9, 10, 11.

_LECTURE XIII._

CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST, AND WITHOUT RITUAL.

_BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU._

“To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but
chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up
a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual
sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”—1 _Pet._ ii. 4, 5.

_INDEX OF TEXTS._

EXPLAINED OR REFERRED TO IN LECTURES II. V. VI. XI. XIII.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CORRESPONDENCE

ON THE

TRINITARIAN AND UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY

LIVERPOOL.

---------------------

_To all who call themselves Unitarians in the town
and neighbourhood of Liverpool._

“And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into
his lodging to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God,
PERSUADING THEM CONCERNING JESUS, both out of the law of Moses and
out of the prophets, from morning till evening.”—Acts xxviii. 23.

Men and Brethren,—I am aware that the term “Religious Controversy,” is a
phrase peculiarly revolting to many minds; that it presents to them
nothing in its aspect but that which has been sarcastically called the
“_Acetum Theologicum_,” a something bitter and distasteful, of more than
common offensiveness and asperity. It is for this reason that, in
proposing a course of lectures on the subjects in controversy between
the Church of England and those who call themselves UNITARIANS, and who,
by that very term, seem to impute to the great majority of professing
Christians, of almost all denominations, a polytheistic creed, and in
requesting your attendance on these lectures, and inviting your most
solemn attention to those subjects, I wish, antecedently, to remove from
myself every suspicion of unkindness towards you, and to take away any
supposition of unchristian asperity in my feelings, or of a desire to
inflict upon the humblest individual amongst you unnecessary pain. That
no mere political difference of opinion, much less that any apprehension
of danger to the Established Church, have originated this movement, will
be sufficiently evident from the fact, that while we are surrounded by
many other classes of dissenters, equally opposed to the principle of
our establishment, and much more likely to draw away the members of our
flocks to their communion, I and my reverend brethren, who were
associated with me, on the present occasion, have limited ourselves
exclusively to an inquiry into, and an endeavour to expose, the false
philosophy and dangerous unsoundness of the UNITARIAN SYSTEM.

Now, what is the cause of this distinction? It is simply this, that
while we believe the other dissenting bodies to have arranged an
ecclesiastical system, in our judgment not clearly Scriptural, and
deficient in those particulars which constitute the _perfection_, though
they may not affect the _essence_ of a church, we do at the same time
acknowledge that they generally hold, as articles of faith, those _great
fundamental Gospel truths_ which are the substance of the safety of
souls; truths which, while so held, give them a part in that gracious
covenant in Christ, _within which_ God has revealed a way of salvation
for all and _out of which_ he has not revealed a way of mercy to any.
These fundamental truths are the very doctrines which are controverted
between _us_ and _those_ whom we call in courtesy, but not as of right,
UNITARIANS: viz., the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the atoning
sacrifice, the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit, the fall of our
nature, and the gracious renovation of the human soul, through his
supernatural operation. Assured as I am that these truths (which,
without a desperate mutilation, or an awful tampering with the plain
language of the Word of God, it seems impossible to exclude from that
divine record) are of the essence of our souls’ safety, I ask you, men
and brethren, I put it to your consciences, is it not of the nature of
the tenderest charity, of the purest love, of the most affectionate
sympathy with those in the extreme of peril, and that an _eternal
peril_, to supplicate to these doctrines the attention of such as have
not yet received them, to pray them to come and “search with us the
Scriptures, whether these things be so?”—Acts xvii. 11. Shall he who,
unwittingly, totters blindfold on the edge of a precipice, deem it a
rude or an uncharitable violence which would snatch him with a strong
and a venturous hand, or even it may be with a painful grasp, from the
fearful ruin over which he impends? Is it not to your own judgment a
strong antecedent ground of presumption, that you are alarmingly and
perilously mistaken in this matter, when you see such numbers of
highly-gifted and intellectual men, men of study—of general information
and of prayer,—holy men, men who “count not their lives dear unto them,”
so that they may honour God and preach this gospel, and that not in one
particular place, but over the whole surface of the church; who yet
account these truths, which you reject, as the essential truths of
salvation; truths built, you will remember, in their minds, not on the
traditions or authority of men, but on the lively oracles of God?

Seeing, then, men and brethren,

1. That the points of difference between us are of the _very highest
possible importance_, and not matters of mere theoretical speculation,
as some of your writers have striven vainly to make appear; that, in
short, if Unitarians be sound interpreters of Holy Scripture, we
Trinitarians are guilty of the most heinous of all sins—_idolatry_; and
if, on the other hand, ours be the creed of the apostles, saints, and
martyrs, Unitarians are sunk in _the most blasphemous and deadly error_,
and are wholly unworthy of being considered _Christians_, in any proper
sense of the word. And seeing,

2. That considerable numbers, it is apprehended, especially among the
middling and lower classes, who outwardly profess Unitarian principles,
are in total ignorance of the unscriptural nature and dangerous
character of those principles. And seeing,

3. That the controversial discussion of disputed points was
unquestionably the practice of the apostolic and primitive, as well as
of all other ages of religious revival, and is calculated as a means,
under the good blessing of Almighty God, to “open men’s eyes, and to
turn them from darkness to light;”—We invite and beseech you, by the
mercies of God in Christ, to come and give us at least a patient
hearing, while we endeavour to “persuade you concerning Jesus,” and “by
all means to win some of you.” It is impossible that we can have any
base or worldly motive in thus addressing you—any other motive, indeed,
besides that which is here avouched, viz., _our solemn impression of the
value of souls, and of the peril to which the false philosophy of
Unitarianism exposes them_.

Surely it is a sweet and a pleasant thing,—a thing not to divide and
sever, but to unite and to gather into the bonds of dearest
affection—thus to tell and to hear together of the great things which
our God has done for our souls; of His love to us, when He, “Who thought
it not robbery to be equal with God, did take upon him the form of a
servant, and, being found in fashion as a man, did humble himself, and
become obedient unto death, even the death of a cross.”—Phil. ii. 6-8.

It is the intention of my reverend brethren and myself to meet together
on the morning of Tuesday, the 5th of February, (the day immediately
preceding the commencement of the course,) for the purpose of solemn
humiliation before God, and earnest prayer for the blessing of our
Heavenly Father, upon the work in which we are about to engage, that we
may be enabled to exhibit and preserve “the mind of Christ,” while
employed in “contending for the faith,” and that we may have great
success in our endeavours to be instrumental in enlightening the eyes
which we believe to have been blinded by “the god of this world,” and
causing “the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, WHO IS THE IMAGE OF
GOD, to shine unto them.”—2 Cor. iv. 4.

And now, men and brethren, humbly and affectionately praying your
serious attention to these things, I commend you to the protection and
blessing of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I remain your
friend and servant in the gospel, for the Lord’s sake,

FIELDING OULD,

Christ Church, Jan. 21, 1839. Minister of Christ Church.

---------------------

_To the Rev. Fielding Ould, and the other Clergymen about to lecture
on the Unitarian Controversy in Christ Church._

Reverend Sirs,—A paper has been put into our hands, and an advertisement
has appeared in the public journals, containing a “Syllabus of a Course
of Lectures on the Controversy between the Protestant Churches and the
(so called) Unitarians,” &c. As individual inquirers after truth, and
disciples of Jesus, we deliberately hold the characteristic doctrines of
Unitarian Christianity; and, as ministers among a class of Protestants,
who, binding themselves and their pastors by no human creed or
interpretation, encourage us to seek for ourselves and expound for them
the uncorrupted Gospel, we publicly preach the faith which we privately
hold. We feel, therefore, a natural interest in the determination of
yourself and brother clergymen to call attention to the Unitarian
Controversy, and a desire that the occasion may be made conducive to the
promotion of candid research, the diminution of sectarian prejudice, and
the diffusion of the true faith, and the spirit of our great Master.

We are not of opinion that a miscellaneous audience, assembled in a
place of worship, constitutes the best tribunal to which to submit
abstruse theological questions, respecting the canon, the text, the
translation of Scripture—questions which cannot be answered by any
“defective scholarship.” You however, who hold that mistakes upon these
points may forfeit salvation, have consistently appealed to such
tribunal; and nothing is left to us but to hope that its decision may be
formed after just attention to the evidence. This end can be attained
only by popular advocacy on neither side, or popular advocacy on both;
and, as you have preferred the latter, we shall esteem it a duty to
co-operate with you, and contribute our portion of truth and argument
towards the correction of public sentiment on the great questions at
issue between us. Deeply aware of our human liability to form and to
convey false impressions of views and systems from which we dissent, we
shall be anxious to pay a calm and respectful attention to your defence
of the doctrines of your church. We will give notice of your lectures,
as they succeed each other, to our congregations, and exhort them to
hear you in the spirit of Christian justice and affection; presuming
that, in a like spirit, you will recommend your hearers to listen to
such reply as we may think it right to offer. We are not conscious of
any fear, any interest, any attachment to system, which should interfere
with the sincere fulfilment of _our_ part in such an understanding; and,
for the performance of _yours_, we rely on your avowed zeal for that
Protestantism which boldly confides the interpretation of Scripture to
individual judgment, and to that sense of justice which, in Christian
minds, is the fruit of cultivation and sound knowledge. As you think it
the duty of Unitarians to judge of your doctrines, not from our
objections, but from your vindication, you cannot question the duty of
Trinitarians to take their impressions of our faith from us, rather than
from you.

We rejoice to hear that the Christ Church lectures will be published.
Should they issue from the press within a week after delivery, we should
desire to postpone our reply till we had enjoyed the opportunity of
reading them, persuaded that thus we shall best preserve that calmness
and precision of statement, without which, controversial discussions
tend rather to the increase of prejudice than the ascertainment of
truth. Should the publication be deferred for a longer time, the
necessity of treating each subject, while its interest is fresh, will
oblige us to forego this advantage; and we shall, in such case, deliver,
each week, an evening lecture in answer to that preached in Christ
Church on the preceding Wednesday. Permit us to ask, how early an
appearance of your printed lectures may be expected; and whether you
will recommend your congregations to attend with candour to our replies.

We fear, however, that neither from the pulpit nor the press will your
statements and ours obtain access extensively to the same persons; your
discourses will, perhaps, obtain readers, too exclusively, among
Trinitarians; ours, certainly, among Unitarians. In order to place your
views and ours fairly side by side, allow us to propose the following
arrangements; that an epitome of each lecture, and another of the reply,
furnished by the respective authors, shall appear weekly in the columns
of one and the same newspaper; the newspaper being selected, and the
length of the communications prescribed, by previous agreement. Or
should you be willing, we should prefer making some public journal the
vehicle of a discussion altogether independent of the lectures,
conducted in the form of a weekly correspondence, and having for its
_matter_ such topics as the first letter of the series may open for
consideration. In this case you will perceive the propriety of conceding
to us the commencement of the correspondence, as you have pre-occupied
the pulpit controversy; have selected the points of comparison between
your idea of Christianity and ours; and introduced among them some
subjects to which we do not attach the greatest interest and importance.
On this priority, however, we do not insist. You will oblige us by
stating whether you assent to this proposal.

While we are willing to hope for a prevailing spirit of equity in this
controversy, we are grieved to have to complain of injustice, and of a
disregard to the true meaning of words, at its very opening. We must
protest against the exclusive usurpation of the title “Protestant
Churches,” by a class of religionists who practically disown the
principle of Protestantism: who only make the Church (or themselves),
instead of the Pope, the arbiter of truth; who hold error (that is, an
opinion different from their own,) to be fatal to salvation: and who
allow the right of individual judgment only with the penalty of
everlasting condemnation upon all whose individual judgment is not the
judgment of their Church. We take objection also to the spirit that
creeps out in the expression, “_(so called) Unitarians_,” maintaining
that the word does not “impute to others ‘a polytheistic creed;’” but
that as “Trinitarian” denotes one who worships the Godhead in _three_
“persons,” _Unitarian_ fitly describes one who worships the Godhead in
_one_ person. And, above all, we protest against the resolution of our
case into “dishonest or uncandid criticism;” that is the wilful
maintenance of error, knowing it to be such, the Charybdis which one of
your lecturers proposes for us, if we should be fortunate enough to
escape the Scylla of “defective scholarship.” We are deeply concerned
that so much of the “_acetum theologicum_” has mixed thus early in an
invitation, characterized by the chief inviter as “a sweet and pleasant
thing;” and this, too, after a public announcement of having purged the
mind of every feeling but the pure love of the pure truth.

And to you, reverend sir, in whose letter to the Unitarians of this town
and neighbourhood the announcement in question occurs, it is incumbent
on us to address a few remarks, with a special view to acquaint you with
the feelings awakened by your earnest invitation.

The anxiety which that letter manifests to convince us that, in seeking
our conversion, you are actuated by no “base and worldly motive,” is, we
can assure you, altogether superfluous. Of the purity and
disinterestedness of your intention we entertain no doubt; and we regard
it with such unaffected respect, as may be due to every suggestion of
conscience, however unwise and fanatical. If, with the ecclesiastics and
philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, you esteemed
the denial of witchcraft as perilous a heresy as Atheism itself, we
should feel neither wonder nor anger at the zeal with which you might
become apostles of the doctrine of sorcery. Any one who can convince
himself that _his_ faith, _his_ hope, _his_ idea of the meaning of
Scripture, afford the only cure for the sins and sorrows and dangers of
the world, is certainly right in spending his resources and himself in
diffusing his own private views. But we are astonished that he can feel
himself so lifted up in superiority above other men, as to imagine that
Heaven depends on their assimilation to himself,—that, in
self-multiplication, in the universal reproduction of his own state of
mind, lies the solitary hope of human salvation. We think that, if we
were possessed by such a belief, our affections towards men would lose
all Christian meekness, our sympathies cease to be those of equal with
equal, the respectful mercy of a kindred sufferer; and that, however
much we might indulge a Pharisaic compassion for the heretic, we should
feel no more the Christian “honour” unto “all men.”

You ask us, reverend sir, whether it is not “a sweet and pleasant
thing,” “to tell and hear together of the great things which God has
done for our souls.” Doubtless, there are conditions under which such
communion may be most “sweet and pleasant.” When they who hold it _agree
in mind_ on the high subjects of their conference, it is “sweet and
pleasant” to speak mutually of “joys with which no stranger
intermeddleth,” and to knit together the human affections, with the
bands of that heavenly “charity,” which, springing from one faith and
one hope, is yet greater than them both. Nay, when good men _differ from
each other_, it is still “sweet and pleasant” to reason together, and
prove all things, and whatsoever things are pure, and true and lovely,
to think on these things, provided that both parties are conscious of
their liability to error, and are anxious to learn as well as to teach:
that each confides in the integrity, ingenuousness, and ability of the
other; that each applies himself with reasons to the understanding, not
with terrors to the will. But such conference is not “sweet and
pleasant” where, fallibility being confessed on one side, infallibility
is assumed on the other; where one has nothing to learn and everything
to teach; where the arguments of an equal are propounded as a message of
inspiration; where presumed error is treated as unpardonable guilt, and
on the fruits of laborious and truth-loving inquiry, terms of
reprobation and menaces of everlasting perdition are unscrupulously
poured.

You announce your intention to set apart, on our behalf, a day of
humiliation and prayer. To supplicate the Eternal Father, as you
propose, to turn the heart and faith of others into the likeness of your
own may appear to you fitting as an act of prayer; it seems to us
extraordinary as an act of humiliation. Permit us to say, that we could
join you in that day’s prayer, if, instead of assuming before God what
doctrines his Spirit should enforce, you would, with us, implore him to
have pity on the ignorance of us all: to take us all by the hand and
lead us into the truth and love, though it should be by ways most
heretical and strange; to wrest us from the dearest reliances and most
assured convictions of our hearts, if they hinder our approach to his
great realities. A blessed day would that be for the peace, brotherhood,
and piety of this Christian community, if the “humiliation” would lead
to a recognition of Christian equality, and the “prayer,” to a
recognition of that spiritual God whose love is moral in its character,
spiritual, not doctrinal in its conditions, and who accepts from all his
children the spirit and the truth of worship.

We fear that you will consider it as a mark of great obduracy, that we
are not more affected by that “purest love” for “those in the extreme of
peril,” which your letter expresses. Let us again assure you that we by
no means doubt the sincerity of that affection. However pure in its
source, it is ineffectual in its result, simply because no one can feel
his heart softened by a commiseration which he is wholly unconscious of
requiring. The pity that feels _with_ me is, of all things, the most
delicious to the heart; the pity that only feels _for_ me, is, perhaps,
of all things, the most insulting.

And, if the tenderness of your message does not subdue us, we trust its
terrors will prevail still less. We are not ignorant, indeed, that, in
dealing with weak minds whose solicitude for their personal security is
greater than their generous faith in truth and God, you enjoy an
advantage over us. We avow that we have no alarms whereby to urge men
into our Church; that we know of no “terrors of the Lord” by which to
“persuade men,” except against sin; nor do we esteem ourselves exclusive
administrators of any salvation, except that best salvation, which
consists in a free mind and emancipated heart; reverencing Christ as the
perfect image of the Father, listening to the accents of reason and
conscience, as to the breathings of God’s spirit, loving all men as his
children, and having hope in death, of a transference from this outer
court into the interior mansions of His house. For this reason, imbecile
souls, without Christian trust and courage, may think it _safer_, at all
events, to seek a place within your Church; but we wonder that you can
feel satisfied, retaining your Protestantism, to appeal thus to fear and
devout policy, rather than to conviction, and that you cannot discern
the mockery of first placing us on the brink of hell and lifting up the
veil, and then bidding us stand there, with cool and unembarrassed
judgment to inquire. Over converts, won by such means, you would surely
have as little reason to rejoice as had the priests of Rome to exult on
the recantation of Galileo. Our fellow worshippers have learned, we
trust, a nobler faith; and will listen to your arguments with more open
and tranquil mind than your invitation, had it attained its end of fear,
would have allowed. They will hold fast, till they see reason to abandon
it, their filial faith in a Divine Father, of whom Jesus, the merciful
and just, is _indeed_ the image; and who, _therefore_, can have neither
curse nor condemnation for “unwitting” error, no delight in
self-confident pretensions, no wrath and scorn for any “honest and good
heart,” which “brings forth its fruit with patience.”

To this God of truth and love, commending our high controversy, and all
whose welfare it concerns, we remain your fellow-labourers in the
Gospel,

JAMES MARTINEAU,
Minister of Paradise-street Chapel.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM,
Minister of Renshaw-street Chapel.
HENRY GILES,
Minister of the Ancient Chapel, Toxteth Park.
Liverpool, Jan. 26, 1839.

---------------------

_To the Reverend James Martineau, J. H. Thom, and Henry Giles._

Gentlemen,—As Christian courtesy seems to require a reply to your
address, published in the _Albion_ of this day, I hasten to furnish it,
though unwilling, for many reasons, to enter into a newspaper discussion
with you on the important subjects which just now engage our attention.
I shall, therefore, (without intending any disrespect,) pass by
unnoticed your critical remarks on certain portions of my recently
published invitation to the members of your body to attend and give a
patient hearing to the lectures about to be delivered at Christ Church,
and confine myself altogether to those points of inquiry to which it is
but reasonable that you should receive an answer. And,

1. You ask, whether I will recommend my congregation to attend (I
presume, in your respective chapels) to hear the replies which you
intend making to our proposed lectures. To this I am compelled to reply
in the _negative_. Were I to consent to this proposal, I should thereby
admit that we stood on the terms of a _religious equality_, which is,
_in limine_, denied. As men, citizens, and subjects, we are doubtless
equal, and will also stand on a footing of equality before the bar of
final judgment; I therefore use the term “_religious equality_” in order
to convey to you the distinction between our relative position as
members of the community and as religionists. Being unable (you will
excuse my necessary plainness of speech) to recognize you as
_Christians_, I cannot consent to meet you in a way which would imply
that we occupy the same _religious_ level. To _you_ there will be no
sacrifice of principle or compromise of feeling, in entering our
churches; to _us_, there would be such a surrender of _both_ in entering
yours, as would peremptorily prohibit any such engagement.

2. You next inquire how early an appearance of our printed lectures may
be expected. In answer to this I have only to say, that arrangements
have been made for publishing each lecture as soon after its delivery as
may be practicable. Within what time this practicability may be found to
coincide, it is of course impossible precisely to determine. It will be
obvious, that I cannot answer for my brethren upon this point; but shall
only observe for myself, that I should hope a week or ten days will be
sufficient for the necessary revisal of proofs, arrangement of
authorities, and other business connected with a careful and correct
publication.

3. Your third inquiry respects a proposal to have an epitome of each
lecture, and its reply, published weekly in the columns of some
previously selected newspaper. Not having as yet had the opportunity of
collecting the sentiments of my reverend brethren, I can only, as
before, give the view which suggests itself to my own mind. I am
inclined to think it would be unfair to the respectable bookseller, who
has undertaken to publish the course _at his own risk_, to expect him to
concur in a proposal which could not but materially injure his sale. As
it is our intention to publish each lecture separately, as well as the
whole collectively, at the close of their delivery, and that in the
cheapest possible form, with a view to the most extensive circulation, I
cannot but hope and believe that our united object will be equally, if
not better, answered, than by resorting to a process which should
necessarily so condense and curtail the matter as to present a very
meagre and insufficient exhibition of the arguments, reasonings,
references, and authorities, on which so much of the value of the
lectures will depend.

4. And, finally, as to your proposal of making some public journal the
vehicle of a discussion independent of the lectures, I regret that I
feel again obliged to decline pledging myself to concur in it. While I
reserve to myself the right of noticing and replying to any
communication which may appear, in a duly authenticated form, in any of
the public journals, I must at the same time express my conviction, that
a newspaper is not the most desirable medium for disquisition on the
deep and awful subjects which must pass under review in a controversy
like that in which we are about to engage. The ordinary class of
newspaper readers, including too frequently the ignorant scoffer, the
sceptical, and the profane, is not precisely that whose attention we
desire to solicit to our high inquiry into the laws of Scriptural
Exegesis, and our application of these laws to the elucidation of the
profound mysteries of the Book of Revelation. I feel no doubt that all
who feel interested on the subject, will contrive to hear or read what
we shall preach and publish; and will thus be furnished with more solid
and suitable materials for forming a correct judgment, than could be
afforded by the casual study of the ephemeral pages of the public press.

Having thus distinctly replied to the several points of your letter, on
which you may have reasonably expected to hear from me; and trusting
that you will not attribute to any want of respect to you the omission
of all notice of the remainder; and congratulating you with all
sincerity on your avowed intention of coming, with your respective
congregations, to hear the exposition which we are about to give of what
we believe to be _fatally false_ in your system, as contrasted with what
we think _savingly true_ in our own; and praying with all fervency, to
the great Head of the Church, to bless and prosper the effort about to
be made for the promotion of his glory, through the instruction of those
who are “ignorant and out of the way,”

I remain, Gentlemen,

Yours for the Lord’s sake,

January 28, 1839. FIELDING OULD.

---------------------

_To the Rev. James Martineau, J. H. Thom, and Henry Giles._

Gentlemen,--I owe it to you and to myself to state, that no offence was
intended, either by me, or, as I conscientiously believe, by my clerical
brethren, in the title of the subject to which my name stands affixed in
the Syllabus of the Lectures on the Unitarian Controversy. I am also
bound to acknowledge, that your letter, on the subject of the lecture,
is written in a style of calmness and courtesy, of which, I trust, you
will have no reason to complain of the absence in the statements which I
shall have to submit to your attention. Of course, this is not the time
for the vindication of the view which I adopt on the great question: I
content myself, therefore, with this public disclaimer of any desire to
substitute irritating language for sound argument.

I remain, Gentlemen,

Yours, with all due respect,

THOS. BYRTH.

---------------------

_To the Reverend Fielding Ould._

Rev. Sir,—We beg to offer you our thanks for your prompt and distinct
reply, in the _Liverpool Courier_ of yesterday, to the proposals
submitted to you in our letter of Monday. We are as little anxious as
yourself for the prolongation of this preliminary newspaper
correspondence; and however much we may regret the negative character of
your answers to our questions, we should have reserved all comment upon
them for notice elsewhere, if you did not appear to us to have left
still open to consideration the proposed discussion (independent of the
lectures) through the press. That the pulpit controversy should be on
_unequal terms_, is, we perceive, a matter of conscience with you; but
your objections to a newspaper controversy seem to arise, not from any
desire to withhold your readers from our writings, as you would your
hearers from our preaching, but from the unfitness of a political
journal to be the vehicle of religious argument. Permit us, then, to
say, that we have no preference for this particular _medium_ of
discussion; that we are wholly indifferent as to its _form_, provided
the substantial end be gained of _bringing your arguments and ours
before the attention of the same parties_, and that _any_ plan which you
may suggest, affording promise of the attainment of this end, whether it
be the _joint_ publication of the lectures in your church and those in
our chapels, or the appearance in the pages of a religious journal
(either already established, or called into existence for the occasion,
and limited to this single object), will receive our welcome acceptance.

Had we any desire to see a theological opponent in the wrong, we should
leave the case between us in its present position, and should not
persevere thus in opening the way towards a fair adjudication of it; but
our reverence for the religion of which you are a representative and
symbol before the world, transcends all paltry controversial feelings,
and we should see, with grave sorrow, the honour of Christianity
compromised by the rejection, on the part of its authorized ministers,
of the acknowledged principles of argumentative justice. You will not,
we trust, incur the reproach of inviting a discussion _with_ us, and
then changing it into an indictment _against_ us. _You_ have originated
the appeal to the great tribunal of public opinion in this Christian
community; _you_ are plaintiff in this controversy; you will not, we
feel assured, so trifle, in things most sacred, with the rules of
evidence, as to insist that your case shall be heard in one court, and
before one jury, while your defendant’s case is banished to another, and
the verdict pronounced without balancing the attestation and comparing
the pleadings. Should you, moreover, succeed in convincing your readers,
that this is a discussion not (as we submit) between church and church,
but (as you contend) between Christianity and No-Christianity, the
effect will be yet more to be deplored, for, in such case, Christianity
will appear to claim from its votaries the advantage of an exclusive
hearing for itself, and, while challenging, by the very act of
controversy, the appeal to argument, to leave, for those who are
stigmatized as unbelievers, the honour of demanding that open field
which, usually, truth is found to seek, and falsehood to avoid. We trust
that you will not thus inflict a wound on a religion which, in all its
forms, we deeply venerate.

You deny our _religious equality_ with _you_. Is it as a matter of
_opinion_, or as a matter of _certainty_, that such equality is denied?
If it is only as an opinion, then this will not absolve you from fair
and equal discussion on the grounds of such opinion. If it is with you
not an _opinion_, but a _certainty_, then, Sir, this is Popery. Popery
we can understand,—we know, at least, what it is,—but Protestantism
erecting itself into Romish infallibility, yet still claiming to be
Protestantism, is to us a sad and humiliating spectacle, showing what
deep roots Roman Catholicism has in the weaker parts of our common
nature.

We confess ourselves at a loss to comprehend your distinction between
_civil_ equality and _religious_ equality. We claim equally as
fellow-_men_, as partakers of a common _nature_; of that nature the
religious elements are to us incomparably dearer and more elevating than
the elements that make us merely citizens; and the equality that is
conceded in regard to all our lower attributes, but denied in regard to
those that are spiritual and immortal, is such an equality as you might
concede to the brutes, on the ground of their animal nature, without
injury to the maintenance of your religious superiority. What is meant
by our equality at the bar of final judgment, as citizens, but not as
religionists, we do not know; or, if we can detect a meaning in it, it
is one which we should have supposed belonged to our faith rather than
to yours.

In reference to your repugnance to enter our chapels we say no more,
reserving our right of future appeal in this matter to those members of
your church who may be unable to see the force of your distinction
between religious and social equality. But we are surprised that you
should conceive it so easy a thing for us to enter your churches: and
should suppose it “no sacrifice of principle and compromise of feeling”
in us to unite in a worship which you assure us, must constitute in our
eyes “the most heinous of all sins—Idolatry.” _Either_ you must have
known that we did _not_ consider your worship to be idolatry, _or_ have
regarded our resort to it as a most guilty “compromise of feeling;” to
which, nevertheless, you gave us a solemn invitation; adding now, on our
compliance, a congratulation no less singular.

We thought you had been aware, that, while our services must be, in a
religious view, _painfully deficient_ to you, those of your church are
_positively revolting_ to us. Still as our presence, on such passing
occasions as the present, does not, in our opinion, involve any
“sacrifice of principle,” we shall set the example to our friends of
attending; not making our desire that they should be just dependent on
the willingness of others to be so too. And we shall have this
satisfaction, that, whether you “win” them, or whether we retain them,
the result will be a faith held, not on the precarious tenure of
ignorance or submission, but in the security of intelligent conviction,
and the peace of a just and enlightened conscience.

We remain, reverend Sir,

Yours, with Christian regard,

JAMES MARTINEAU.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
Liverpool, January 31st, 1839. HENRY GILES.

---------------------

_To the Trinitarians of this Town and Neighbourhood who may feel
interested in the approaching Unitarian Controversy._

Christian Brethren,—A letter of public invitation has been addressed to
the Unitarians of this town and neighbourhood, by the Rev. Fielding
Ould, on behalf of himself and twelve other gentlemen associated with
him, urging us, with the earnestness of Christian anxiety, to bend our
minds to their expositions of our errors and our dangers. We naturally
interpreted this to be an invitation to discuss the most momentous
questions as equal with equal. We thought, indeed, that we saw an
assumption of superiority, if not of infallibility, perhaps inseparable
from minds so trained: still we supposed, that this superiority was to
be maintained by argument and fair discussion: and this was all that we
desired. It never occurred to us, that the reverend gentleman might
possibly expect us to accept him as a divinely appointed judge of truth,
whose teachings were to be received in submission and silence; or that
he could suppose that convictions like ours, convictions that have
resisted all the persuasions of worldly ease and interest, that have
removed from us the charities and sympathies of men like him, and held
in simple fidelity to truth and God, could be so lightly shaken that
nothing more was required to blow them away than a course of _ex parte_
lectures without answer or discussion. If the object had been to confirm
Trinitarians in their views, this kind of proceeding we should have
understood; but surely something more was required when Unitarians were
publicly invited to the controversy. Much less could we anticipate that
the reverend gentleman, holding himself to be upon a “religious level”
far above us, to belong to a different order of spirits, could yet be so
far removed from the Christian and Apostolical spirit as to refuse to
bring his “light” into direct conflict with our “darkness.” With these
expectations of controversy, and having no bonds with anything but
truth, we unfeignedly rejoiced, that, for the first time in this
community, both sides of the great question were about to appear
together before the solemn tribunal of public attention.

In all these things we have been quickly undeceived. In our simplicity,
we believed that discussion was really invited and desired. We now find
that we were invited to hear, but not to argue; that to lecture us is of
the nature of “dearest affection;” but that to hear what we may have to
urge in reply would be to “recognize us” as “_Christians_,” to admit
that we stood on the terms of a _religious equality_, which is, _in
limine_, denied. We now find that all reciprocity is refused to us; that
it never was intended to treat us as equals; that the method of
discussing the Unitarian controversy, about to be adopted, is to hear
only the Trinitarian advocates—to call us around the Christ Church
pulpit to be taught to listen and believe. Clergymen may be so blinded
by ecclesiastical feelings as not to perceive the extreme offensiveness
of all that is assumed in this mode of treating their fellow-men; but we
turn to you, the freer laity of the Church, in generous confidence, that
such conduct will not be found to accord with your spirit of
justice—with the nobler ideas which _you_ have gathered, from the
intercourse of life, of equitable dealing between man and man.

We proposed to the clergymen about to lecture at Christ Church, that
since they had appealed to public opinion, through a popular advocacy,
the pleadings should be on both sides, and, as far as possible, before
the same parties. This is refused to us, because we are not Christians.
Is this in the spirit of the Saviour? It is also refused to us, because
it is asserted, that Trinitarians cannot enter our places of worship
without a sacrifice of principle, whilst we may enter theirs without
pain or compromise. Now the very opposite of this, though not the truth,
would have been nearer to it. In our worship there would be the
inoffensive absence of some views dear to you: in your worship there
would be the actual presence of some views most painful to us. In our
worship, you would hear addressed that Great Spirit whom you, too, adore
and seek: in your worship, we should hear addressed, as God, him whom we
revere and follow, as the image of God, the man Christ Jesus. In our
worship, you would find deficiencies only; in yours, we should find
what, to us, is positively objectionable, religion materialized and the
Deity distributed into persons. The Rev. Fielding Ould, in one of his
letters, represents us as looking upon you to be Polytheists, which we
do not; and, in another of his letters, tells us, that we may enter your
temples without pain or compromise of feeling. It will be evident to
you, Trinitarian laymen, that the Lecturers at Christ Church cannot
retire, upon such reasoning as this, from the full, public, and
impartial discussion which we propose to them, without making it
manifest to the public, that they are _determined_ upon doing so.

We proposed to them discussion through the press, as well as from the
pulpit: and this also is denied to us, on the ground, that newspapers
are read by the sceptical, the scoffing, and the profane. Now, not in
newspapers alone, _but in any journal whatever_, was the controversy
offered by us; yet we could not have anticipated the objection, when we
recollect the use made of the newspapers by the religious party to which
the reverend gentlemen belong. Again have we tendered discussion,
through the press, in any form whatever, with the single condition, that
the views of both parties shall be presented to the same readers—in the
hope, not as yet gratified, of an answer in a juster spirit.

Nothing now remains for us but to appeal from ecclesiastics to minds
more generally influenced, to minds that, taught in the great schools of
humanity, have learned mutual respect, and that have dropt, in the free
and noble intercourses of man with man, the monkish and cloistered
sentiment of spiritual as of civil superiority. To you, then, the
Trinitarian laity, we make our appeal; from the exclusiveness and
assumed infallibility of clergymen, to men who, from familiarity with
wider influences, have formed different conceptions of Christian
brotherhood and of Christian justice. We should not have held ourselves
authorized in thus addressing you had we supposed, that your cause or
yourselves, your ideas of justice, had been worthily supported by your
ecclesiastical representatives, who, we firmly believe you will agree
with us in feeling, have openly betrayed both you and it.

We appeal to you, not without confidence, to give us that equal audience
which your clergymen have refused; that those of you who, through
interest in the great question, are led to hear the Trinitarian
statements, will, in the love of the truth, and in the spirit of
equitable inquiry, hear also the Unitarian replies. We seek not to make
you Unitarians: that, at least, is not our chief desire and aim. But
would to God that we could do something to spread that true Christianity
which holds the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, and deems
charity dearer and more heavenly than doctrinal faith! Would to God that
this controversy might have some effect, not in building up any one
creed, or swelling any one sect, but in destroying the delusive and
separating ideas that lie at the roots of creeds, and are the nourishers
of bigotry, uncharitableness, and heresies! We should deserve well of
this great community, if we could remove from it this cause of strife
and bitterness,—if we could exhibit the God of Jesus requiring from us,
not speculative opinions, but the heart, the temper, and the life of
Christ!—if we could expose the unchristian idea of men preparing
themselves for a moral heaven by a metaphysical creed, and unite those
who now consume their energies, their temper, and their time, in
contending for abstruse and uncertain dogmas in the deeds of mercy and
of brotherhood which flow out of our common Christianity, and which, in
the wide wastes of sin, of ignorance, and of misery, that surround us,
are the moral debts of man to man, and constitute the religion which,
before God, even our Father, is pure and undefiled.

Respectfully directing your attention to our advertisement of a syllabus
of Lectures on the Unitarian Controversy, presenting both sides of the
question—our portion of which will be delivered in Paradise Street
Chapel, on successive Tuesdays,

We are, Christian brethren,

Yours, in the spirit of Christian brotherhood,

JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
Liverpool, Feb. 2, 1839. HENRY GILES.
JAMES MARTINEAU.

---------------------

TRINITARIAN LECTURE,

ON WEDNESDAY EVENINGS IN CHRIST CHURCH.

1839.—February 6.

1. Introductory. The practical importance of the
Controversy with Unitarians.

_Rev. F. Ould._

February 13.

2. The Integrity of the Canon of Holy Scripture
maintained against Unitarian Objections.

_Rev. Dr. Tattershall._

February 20.

3. The Unitarian Interpretation of the New Testament
based upon defective Scholarship, or on
dishonest or uncandid Criticism.

_Rev. T. Byrth._

February 27.

4. The proper Humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

_Rev. J. Jones._

March 6.

5. The proper Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ proved
from Prophecies, Types, and Jewish Ordinances.

_Rev. J. H. Stewart._

March 13.

6. The proper Deity of our Lord the only ground of
Consistency in the Work of Redemption.

_Rev. H. M‘Neile._

March 20.

7. The Doctrine of the Trinity proved as a
consequence from the Deity of our Lord Jesus
Christ.

_Rev. D. James._

March 27.

8. The Atonement indispensable to the Necessities of
Fallen Man, and shown to stand or fall with the
Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

_Rev. R. P. Buddicom._

April 3.

9. The Deity, Personality, and Operations of the Holy
Ghost.

_Rev. J. E. Bates._

April 10.

10. The Sacraments practically rejected by
Unitarians.

_Rev. H. W. M‘Grath._

April 17.

11. The Nicene and Athanasian Creeds explained and
defended.

_Rev. R. Davies._

April 24.

12. The Personality and Agency of Satan.

_Rev. H. Stowell._

May 1.

13. The Eternity of future Rewards and Punishments.

_Rev. W. Dalton._

--------------

UNITARIAN LECTURE,

ON TUESDAY EVENINGS IN PARADISE STREET CHAPEL.

1839.—February 12.

1. The practical importance of the Unitarian
Controversy.

_Rev. J. H. Thom._

February 19.

2. The Bible; what it is, and what it is not.

_Rev. J. Martineau._

February 26.

3. Christianity not the property of Critics and
Scholars, but the gift of God to all men.

_Rev. J. H. Thom._

March 5.

4. “There is one God, and one Mediator between God
and men, the Man Christ Jesus.”

_Rev. H. Giles._

March 12.

5. The proposition ‘That Christ is God,’ proved to be
false from the Jewish and the Christian
Scriptures.

_Rev. J. Martineau._

March 19.

6. The scheme of Vicarious Redemption inconsistent
with itself, and with the Christian idea of
Salvation.

_Rev. J. Martineau. _

March 26.

7. The unscriptural Origin and Ecclesiastical History
of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

_Rev. J. H. Thom._

April 2.

8. Man, the Image of God.

_Rev. H. Giles._

April 9.

9. The Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth, who
dwelleth in us, and teacheth all things.

_Rev. J. H. Thom._

April 16.

10. Christianity without Priest, and without Ritual.

_Rev. J. Martineau._

April 23.

11. Creeds the foes of Heavenly Faith; the allies of
worldly Policy.

_Rev. H. Giles._

April 30.

12. The Christian view of Moral Evil here.

_Rev. J. Martineau._

May 7.

13. The Christian view of Retribution hereafter.

_Rev. H. Giles._

---------------------

_To the (so-called) Unitarians of Liverpool._

Men and Brethren,—Before the commencement of the lectures, on which I
have taken the liberty of inviting your attendance, I am anxious
respectfully to address to you a few observations in reference to the
letters which have appeared in the public journals under the signature
of your ministers.

It would appear that these gentlemen have been desirous to produce upon
the public mind an unfavourable impression, _à priori_, of my reverend
brethren, and of myself in particular, because of our having declined,
on their proposal, to enter upon a course different from that which we
had originally contemplated. “You will not, we trust,” say Messrs.
Martineau, Thom, and Giles, “incur the reproach of inviting a discussion
_with us_, and then changing it into an indictment _against us_.” Now,
we never invited any discussion with these gentlemen; if we had, we
should have addressed ourselves to them personally. But, while we would
not, and do not, shrink from any discussion with them into which we can
consistently enter, we cannot allow ourselves to be diverted from the
pursuit of our original purpose, _viz._, to deliver a course of lectures
upon the various points of Unitarian doctrine, which we believe, and
think we can prove, to be not only _unscriptural_, but _fatal to the
souls_ of those who embrace them, and which cannot be maintained (as
appears from the published works of the most learned Unitarians) without
a virtual surrender of the inspiration of the Bible. Believing, as I do,
that your best interests for time and for eternity are involved in the
momentous questions at issue—questions affecting the very vitality of
true religion—I inserted a letter in the daily prints, expressed, as I
had hoped, in terms of courtesy and affection, inviting your presence
and soliciting your attention. I also caused a notice to be published of
our intention to print the lectures, separately and in a collective
form, for extensive and immediate circulation, so that the amplest
opportunity might be afforded for replying to our arguments on the part
of any who might feel disposed to the task. That is, we proposed to
employ the instrumentality of the _pulpit_ and the _press_, (an
instrumentality, be it observed, _equally at the service of those who
differed from us_,) in order to promote the best interests of a portion
of our countrymen, whom we believe to be “perishing for the lack of
knowledge.”

Where is there to be found here aught of _arrogance_, or
_uncharitableness_, or “_assumed infallibility_”? Where is there aught
of unfairness, or “any rejection on our parts of the acknowledged
principles of argumentative justice?” It is true we refuse to advise our
respective congregations to attend at Unitarian chapels, to hear such
answers as your ministers may think it right to offer in refutation of
our reasonings. Our principles and our consciences alike forbid our
concurrence in such a proposal. We cannot go ourselves, nor recommend
our people to go and have their ears wounded, their hearts pained, and
their Christian sensibilities shocked, by the iteration of such, in our
view, blasphemous statements, as we find spread in painful profusion
over the pages of Unitarian theology. And why, then, it is asked, do we
invite or expect your attendance upon what are called “the painfully
revolting” services of our church? For this reason, that, as appears
from the works of all their principal writers, Unitarians do not attach
the same importance to religious doctrines and opinion that we do. It
seems to be with them a matter of comparative indifference what dogmas a
man holds, provided he be _sincere_ in his profession; while with us
sincerity is no criterion of truth, being persuaded that as a man’s
_religious opinions_ are, so will his _conduct_ be in time, and his
_destiny_ through eternity. Being of opinion, then, that our people
would suffer by being brought into contact with error, in the same way
that the human body would be endangered by accepting an invitation to
feed at a table where poison was mingled with bread, we feel obliged to
decline recommending the proposed arrangement to their adoption. But,
feeling that there would be neither danger nor risk to those who are
represented as having a moral appetite for poison as well as bread, and
as looking upon all theological opinions if not as equally harmless in
their bearing on their eternal interests, we ventured to invite you to
come, that we might “persuade you concerning Jesus.” If there be any of
you whose conscience revolts against a participation in Trinitarian
worship, we invite not his attendance: we would be not intentionally
accessory to the wounding of the weakest conscience among you.

You will thus, men and brethren, perceive what was intended by the
assertion that our “_religious level_” was different. We meant not to
arrogate to ourselves any undue superiority, but simply to state a fact.
And while we think it both _unreasonable and unjust_ that we should be
expected to become the auditors of what we deem blasphemous error, or
pledge ourselves to the joint circulation of what we call truth and
falsehood, and thus be “partakers of other men’s sins,”—we cannot but be
of opinion that there is some ground for these charges in reference to
the conduct of those who, on this ground, attempt to prejudice the
public mind against us, as if we were declining a battle which we had
invited and provoked.

We are convinced that the attempt will not succeed. The public will have
eyes to see with sufficient clearness the real merits of the case, and
will condemn the efforts made to blind its vision, or at least incline
it to take a distorted view of our relative position.

Again repeating my invitation to all who can conscientiously accept it,
to attend our lectures, and leaving cheerfully to others the free use of
the only weapons we employ—the BIBLE—the PULPIT—and the Press—and
praying the Lord to guide all his inquiring people, by the teaching of
his Holy Spirit, into all truth, even the “truth as it is in Jesus,” I
remain, men and brethren, yours in the bonds of love,

Christ Church, Feb. 5, 1839. FIELDING OULD.

---------------------

_To the Rev. J. Martineau, J. H. Thom, and Henry Giles._

Gentlemen,—Having hitherto corresponded with you on my own individual
responsibility, I have to request that you will consider me as _alone_
answerable for what has hitherto appeared under my signature. I had this
morning, for the first time, the opportunity of personal conference with
my reverend brethren collectively at the expected meeting which took
place at my house. I have now to address you upon the result.

All that we had originally contemplated was, the delivery of a course of
lectures upon the principal doctrines in controversy between Unitarians
and ourselves. It now appears that my invitation to the Unitarian laity
to come and hear us, while we brought their avowed principles to the
test of the Word of God, has been taken advantage of by you, and led to
a series of proposals on your part, which I took upon myself to decline.
I have this day addressed a letter to the members of your body
generally, which I trust will have the effect of setting that part of
the subject in its proper point of view.

It is, however, indispensable to distinguish carefully between this
_particular invitation_ of yours, and _discussion_ generally. Your
letter to the Trinitarian laity invites discussion in any shape which
shall effectually bring the statements of both parties before the same
individuals. We are now prepared to gratify your desire, and WE ACCEPT
YOUR INVITATION. Our lectures, however, shall be first delivered; on
this we are determined. Then, in the name of all, and in dependence upon
our blessed Lord and Master, three of our body will be ready to meet you
three before a public audience in this town; all preliminaries to be, of
course, arranged by mutual conference. We propose, if you please, to
take the three great subjects into which the controversy obviously
divides itself, _viz._,

1. EVIDENCE of the genuineness, authenticity, and inspiration of those
parts of our authorized version of the Holy Scriptures which you deny.

2. TRANSLATION of those parts which you alter, and in our judgment
misrepresent.

3. THEOLOGY, involving those principles of vicarious sacrifice which we
deem vital, and which you discard.

Our proposal, then, is to meet you either _one day_ on each subject, as
you please; or _one week_ on each subject, as you please: the discussion
to be conducted in speeches of _one hour_ or _half an hour_ each, as you
please.

And now, trusting that this proposed arrangement may prove satisfactory
to _you_, and to all who take an interest in this controversy, and
fervently praying the great Head of the Church to overrule our purposes
to the advancement of His kingdom and the promotion of His glory,

I remain, Gentlemen,

Yours for the Lord’s sake,

February 5, 1839. FIELDING OULD.

---------------------

_To the Reverend Fielding Ould._

Reverend Sir,—It would have been gratifying to us to receive from you an
answer to our offer of a discussion, through the press, before being
called upon to consider a proposal, altogether new, for a platform
controversy.

You give us an invitation to _talk_, and call this an acceptance of our
offer to _write_. The two proposals are so distinct, that it is not easy
to see how the one could be transformed into the other; nor is the
mistake explained on turning to the words of our invitation, appealed to
by you, and contained in our letter to the Trinitarian laity. They are
these:—“We have tendered discussion _through the press_, in any form
whatever, with the single condition that the statements of both parties
shall be presented to the same _readers_.” You leave the impression,
that an oral debate is comprised within the terms of this offer; but, in
doing so, you widen its scope, by striking out the phrases which
restrict it to _printing and publication_, and describe it thus; “Your
letter to the Trinitarian laity invites discussion _in any shape_ which
shall effectually bring the statements of both parties before the same
_individuals_.” You will at once perceive the misrepresentation; will
acknowledge that the idea of settling historical and philological
controversies, by popular debate, has neither origin nor sanction from
us;—and will permit us to recal you to our first proposal of discussion
through the press,—a proposal to which, though now made for the third
time, we have yet received no answer.

Meanwhile, we will not delay the reply which is due to this new
suggestion of a platform controversy. We decline it altogether; and for
this answer you must have been prepared, by the sentiment we expressed
in an early stage of this correspondence: “We are not of opinion that a
miscellaneous audience, assembled in a place of worship, constitutes the
best tribunal to which to submit abstruse theological questions
respecting the canon, the text, the translation of Scripture,—questions
which cannot be answered by any defective scholarship.” To assemble a
similar audience in an amphitheatre, where the sanctities of worship are
not present to calm and solemnize the mind, is evidently not to improve
the tribunal. The scholar knows that such exhibitions are a mockery of
critical theology: the devout, that they are an injury to personal
religion. We are surprised that any serious and cultivated man can think
so lightly of the vast contents of the questions on which we differ, as
to be able to dispense with calm reflection on the evidence adduced, and
to answer off-hand all possible arguments against him, within the range
of biblical and ecclesiastical literature. We are not accustomed to
treat your system with such contempt, however trivial an achievement it
may seem to you to subvert ours. In reverence for truth, in a spirit of
caution inseparable from our desire to discharge our trust with
circumspect fidelity, and from a belief that, to think deeply, is the
needful pre-requisite to speaking boldly, we offered you the most
responsible method of discussion, in which we might present to each
other, and fix ineffaceably before the world, the fruits of thought and
study. To this offer we adhere; but cannot join you, on an occasion thus
solemn, in an appeal to the least temperate of all tribunals. We
recollect that one of the clergymen associated with you refused an oral
discussion of the Roman Catholic controversy. We approved of his
decision; and, in like circumstances, adopt it.

Will you allow us to correct a mistake which appears in your enumeration
of the three topics most fit for discussion? We do not, as Unitarians,
deny the genuineness, or alter the translation, of any part of the
authorized version of the holy Scriptures. The Unitarians have neither
canon nor version of their own, different from those recognized by other
churches. As biblical critics, we do indeed, neither more nor less than
others, exercise the best judgment we can on texts of doubtful
authority, (as did Bishop Marsh, in rejecting the “heavenly witnesses,”
1 John v. 7,) and on the accuracy of translations (as did Archbishop
Newcome, when he published his version of the New Testament); but no
opinions on these matters belong to us _as a class_, or are needful to
the defence of our theology. If you allude to the Improved Version, we
would state, that it contains the private criticism of one or two
individuals; that it has never been used in our churches, nor even much
referred to in our studies, and is utterly devoid of all authority with
us; and that, for ourselves, we greatly prefer, for general fidelity as
well as beauty, the authorized translation, which we always employ.

In your letter to the Unitarians, published in the _Courier_ of
Wednesday, you state that you never invited discussion with us (the
ministers) personally. We never imagined or affirmed that you did. But
surely you invited discussion with the class of persons called
Unitarians; and as a class has no voice except through its
representatives, and no discussion can take place without two parties,
you cannot think that we are departing from our proper sphere in
answering to your call. Did you not invite us (the Unitarians) to you,
“to tell and hear together the great things which God has done for our
souls?” And did this mean that all the “_telling_” was to be on one
side, and all the “_hearing_” on the other? Did you not press upon our
admiration the primitive practice of “controversial discussion of
disputed points?” And did this mean that there was to be neither
“_controversy_,” “_discussion_,” nor “_dispute_,” but _authoritative
teaching_ on one side, and _obedient listening_ on the other? In one of
two relations you must conceive yourself to stand to us;—that of a
superior, who _instructs_ with superhuman authority, or that of an
equal, who “_discusses_” with human and fallible reasonings. Between
these two conditions, there is _no third_; nor can you, with justice,
take sometimes the one and sometimes the other, according as the
occasion may require the language of dignity or that of meekness. We
certainly addressed you as an equal, and did not pay you the disrespect
of imagining that your invitation to “discussion” meant nothing at all.

We are sorry that you ascribe to us any intention to divert you from
your contemplated course of lectures. Be assured nothing could be
further from our design. We simply desired that, having _invited us_,
you should have _recognized us when we presented ourselves_, as parties
in the “discussion.”

We remain, reverend Sir,

Yours, with Christian regard,

HENRY GILES.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
Liverpool, February 7th. JAMES MARTINEAU.

---------------------

_To the Revs. J. Martineau, J. H. Thom, and H. Giles._

Gentlemen,—I think it due to the cause of truth, as well as to the
interest awakened in the public mind by this controversy, to address to
you a few observations on your last letter, as published in the
_Mercury_ of Friday. Though still strongly of opinion that the columns
of a newspaper present a most undesirable medium of communication upon
subjects such as those we are now engaged in discussing, I am unwilling
in the absence of any other accessible instrumentality, to lose the
opportunity it affords of impressing upon the attention of all
reflecting men the actual position which we relatively occupy.

1.—Being aware of the sincere anxiety which you have already manifested
for “discussion in any shape which should bring the statements on both
sides before the same parties,” it is not without considerable surprise
that I perceive that you “decline altogether” my proposal of a “platform
controversy.” Now, while you say I invited you to “_talk_,” and I answer
I invited you to _argue_, I cannot but think it will appear evident to
most, that by the subsequent publication, in an authentic form, of our
oral debate, you would have gained all that you could have desired in
the assistance of the press, while a select auditory, equally composed
of the respective friends of both parties, would have been able to judge
of your ability, not intellectually, but morally, to meet the case we
could have made out against your system. I cannot but hope that a secret
consciousness of the weakness of your cause has prompted your
determination, and am of opinion that while a discerning public will
approve the discretion of your resolve, they will not be slow to
appreciate its motive, or the precise measure of your zeal for a candid
impartial hearing.

But the “settling of historical and philological controversies by
popular debate has neither origin nor sanction from you.” Perhaps not:
but you cannot say that such a course is altogether without precedent.
You have doubtless heard of the protracted debate upon these same
controversies which were held in the north of Ireland a few years ago
between Mr. Bagot and Mr. Porter. May I ask whether it was the _result_
of that discussion that induced you to withhold your sanction from all
future controversies so conducted? Mr. Porter did not consider it
inconsistent with the principles of Unitarianism to debate his creed
before “a miscellaneous audience.” Are you wiser than he in your
generation? Again:—the proposed tribunal is not the best “to which to
submit abstruse theological questions respecting the _canon_, the
_text_, the translation of scripture.” But do you not apprise us a
little lower down, that you, as Unitarians, do _not deny the
genuineness, or alter the translation of any_ part of the authorized
version of the holy scriptures? Why, then, there is no ground for the
above apprehension. As these are not points which the tribunal will have
to try, why question its competence on their account? You are surprised
that I would “dispense with calm reflection on the evidence adduced.” I
am, in my turn, surprised that you should suppose I have any such
intention. When the “evidence adduced” has been taken down and
published, what is there to prevent its being “calmly” weighed and
estimated at its proper value? And then it is hard “to answer off-hand
all possible arguments” advanced. So it is; but not harder for _you_
than for _us_. Here at least we should stand on a footing of _perfect
equality_. It was hardly to be expected that _you_ should object to
this.

2.—I now come to the _mistake_ into which you say I have fallen, and
which you offer, obligingly, to correct. “We do not, as Unitarians, deny
the _genuineness_ or _alter the translation_ of any part of the
authorized version of the holy scriptures. The Unitarians have neither
canon nor version of their own different from those recognized by other
churches.” If this be true I certainly have been mistaken; but have the
satisfaction of knowing that this mistake has been shared by a host of
abler critics and more learned scholars than I can pretend to be. I had
always thought that I read of the liberties taken with the received text
by the Priestleys and Belshams—the Wakefields and Channings, when they
were of opinion that they spoke too strongly the language of
Trinitarians. I had also understood that the Bruces, the Drummonds, and
the Armstrongs of Ireland had performed achievements in the same line,
at which many not a little wondered. I had further imagined that the
unanswered—because unanswerable—volumes of Archbishop Magee presented
evidence on this behalf, with which few were unacquainted. Now, if you
mean to say that you, the ministers and representatives of Liverpool
Unitarianism have never “questioned the genuineness, nor altered the
translation of any part of the authorized version,” I can understand the
assertion, and willingly take your own word for its truth. But if you
mean to affirm that this has not been done, and to a very prodigious
extent, by Unitarians, both domestic and foreign, you will excuse me if
I positively deny the allegation, as being totally without foundation,
and I refer in proof to the notorious lucubrations of the above-named
doctors of Unitarian divinity, as well as to the severe exposures of
their semi-infidel tampering with the Bible which they have called
forth.

But while you do not “deny the genuineness or alter the translation of
any part,” perhaps you question the _inspiration_ of certain portions of
the sacred volume. You will remember that this was _one_ of the branches
of _evidence_ that we proposed to discuss with you, and that not the
least in importance. Why are you silent on this head? Is it not of any
moment, think ye, to admit the _genuineness_ and confess the
_authenticity_ of a book or a chapter or a verse of scripture, if you
withhold your conviction of its _inspiration_? Is it not a fact that you
might hold the _genuineness_ of the two first chapters of St. Matthew
and St. Luke, and feel no disposition to alter the _translation_ of a
word, and, at the same time, boldly deny that they were “given by
inspiration of God?” If I am mistaken here too, I pray to be set right.
If not, then the public will decide upon the candour and fairness of
your profession to remove the necessity of any controversy with you on
the score of EVIDENCE, because of your admission of the _genuineness_
and your satisfaction with the _accuracy_ of the authorized version,
while by an expressive but momentous silence, you acknowledge that the
_greatest of testimonial questions_ is by you disputed, and you at the
same time refuse to come forward boldly, and debate it fairly before the
church.

Again—“Unitarians have neither canon nor version of their own different
from those recognised by,” &c. You anticipate here a reference to “the
improved version,” and tell us that “it contains only the private
criticism of one or two individuals—that it has never been used in your
churches, and is utterly devoid of all authority with you.” Will you
excuse me for expressing my doubts of the accuracy of this statement,
for these reasons: —1. That work was the joint production of some of the
ablest men and best scholars that the Unitarian sect has ever been able
to boast of; and that the shades of Belsham, Lindsey, Jebb, Priestley,
Wakefield, &c.,[5] might well be astonished to hear their learned
labours so contemptuously spoken of by three modern disciples of their
school. 2. That, in the year 1819, (the date of the edition which I
possess,) the improved version had gone through no fewer than _five
editions_—a tolerable criterion of the extent of its circulation in
little more than twenty years. How many it may have passed through
since, I have been as yet unable to ascertain. 3. That so far from its
being “devoid of all authority,” it professes, in the title page, to
have been “published by the Unitarian Society for promoting Christian
Knowledge and the practice of virtue by the distribution of Books.” That
it may “never have been used in your churches” I can well believe, as it
is probable that the feelings of your people would have revolted too
strongly against its introduction, to make the experiment advisable: the
food which it furnishes may have proved too coarse even for the
digestive organs of popular Unitarianism itself. It is also possible
that the modern professors of your theology may be somewhat ashamed of
this awful specimen of “rational and liberal criticism,” and may
secretly wish that it had never seen the light. But the _existence_ of
it, at least, cannot be denied; and there it stands, a painful memorial
and a living witness, of what is “in the heart” of a system that exalts
_reason_ into a dominion over _revelation_, and that, unwarned by the
solemn admonitions contained in the book itself against the presumptuous
additions or detractions of human pride or folly, has dared
sacrilegiously to lay its unhallowed hands on the sacred ark, and to
attempt the mutilation and misrepresentation of the great magna charta
of the spiritual liberties of man.

3.—At the close of your letter, you say, “Surely you invited discussion,
with the class of persons called Unitarians.” I again repeat I did not.
I determined to have a course of lectures delivered in my church on the
points at issue between us and the professors of what we call your
“heresy.” And I invited the persons whom I was and am sincerely anxious
to benefit, to come and hear our well considered convictions of their
errors and their consequent danger, as well as our faithful exhibitions
of what we think “a more excellent way.” It will not be denied that a
clergyman of any denomination, in a free country, and more especially a
clergyman of the national church, has a right to preach, or authorize
others to preach, in his pulpit, according to his own discretion, and
invite whom he pleases to come and hear, without its being understood
that he challenges either the parties so invited, or their
representatives, to enter with him the lists of controversial
discussion. I absolutely protest against any such understanding. I did
not seek to _compel_ the attendance of any of your body, nor yet to deny
to you or them, in reply, the use of the same weapons that I had
employed in the attack. I _did_ mean that those who pleased should come
and hear us “_tell_” them a gospel which they were not _told_ by those
upon whom we looked as “blind leaders of the blind;” and that they
should be prepared to “learn” whatever should commend itself to their
consciences, under our teaching, as the truth of God. We did not, and do
not, expect to be able to bring demonstration home to the hearts of any
by the strength of our arguments, or by the force of our appeals; but we
anticipated that, in answer to our earnest prayers, the power of the
Holy Ghost would accompany our teaching of His truth, and make it
effectual to the conversion of souls “from darkness to light.” We
propose to stand before the congregations that might assemble, neither
as “superiors to instruct with superhuman authority,” nor as “equals to
discuss (if you mean by that _dispute_) with human and fallible
reasonings;” but simply as “ambassadors for Christ, as though God did
beseech them by us, that we might pray them in Christ’s stead—be ye
reconciled to God.”[6] This is the middle position in which we stand,
the _mean_ between your _two extremes_; and by God’s blessing, we will
continue to occupy it, until we shall have delivered our consciences,
and discharged our duty to a numerous, respectable, but, in our
judgment, blinded and deluded class of our fellow-countrymen.

And now, gentlemen, having taken such notice of certain allegations in
your letter as it seemed impossible to pass by, and with the full
purpose of continuing in the course on which I have entered, until,
through the blessing of God, the grand object which I have proposed to
myself shall have been accomplished,

I remain, yours, for the truth’s sake,

FIELDING OULD.

February 11, 1839.

-----

Footnote 5:

See “Improved Version,” note on 1 John, i. 1.

Footnote 6:

2 Cor. v. 20.

---------------------

_To the Revs. J. Martineau, J. H. Thom, and H. Giles._

Gentlemen,—You state, in your letter of the 7th ult., that “your
proposal of discussion through the press, though made for the third
time, has as yet received no answer.” It was thought by ourselves and
our clerical brethren, that as our lectures were to be printed and
published, every facility was afforded you of replying to them through
the same channel, and that thus the whole subject would be fairly
brought before the public.

In addition to this, we have offered to meet you in oral discussion; you
decline the proposal.

Anxiously desirous to bring the whole matter before this great
community, so as to prove that we not only entertain no apprehensions as
to the result, but are convinced that, by such an exposition, great good
will be effected, we, the undersigned, on our own responsibility, ACCEPT
YOUR TERMS of discussing the momentous question between us, in the form
of a correspondence in some public journal or periodical, altogether
independent of the lectures.

We remain, Gentlemen,

Yours, for the sake of the Gospel,

THOMAS BYRTH.
FIELDING OULD.
Liverpool, February 11. HUGH M‘NEILE.

---------------------

_To the Rev. Fielding Ould._

Rev. Sir,—The tone of your last letter makes us rejoice that, by the
acceptance on your parts of discussion through the press, this
correspondence may now be brought to a close.

Let us, Rev. Sir, place before you your own language, and ask, in solemn
sadness, are the feelings it betrays worthy of the occasion, or deserved
by us, or edifying to the public mind? These are your words:—“I cannot
but hope that a secret consciousness of the weakness of your cause has
prompted your determination, and am of opinion, that while a discerning
public will approve the discretion of your resolve, they will not be
slow to appreciate its motive, or the precise measure of your zeal for a
candid and impartial hearing.” Sir, it is not a little mournful to find
a Christian Minister expressing his hope that other men are
hypocrites,—that they are secretly conscious of the weakness of the
cause which they publicly defend. To _hope_ that we secretly know our
errors, whilst publicly preaching them as truth, is, indeed, strange
preference of faith before works. Let us assure you, Sir, that if we
could think of you as this language shows you think of us, we should
decline all discussion with you,—we should regard you as an opponent too
discreditable to be identified with a great question, or to be
considered as an honourable representative of your own party.

We apprehend, Rev. Sir, that nobody but yourself would think of
attributing to conscious weakness our preference of the most perfect and
searching method of discussion, to the most flimsy, insufficient, and
unscholarlike that could by possibility be selected. Had we wished to
catch the ear of a popular assembly, or to turn away attention from weak
points by oratorical artifices, we should have proposed this platform
controversy, instead of, as we did, carefully and purposely wording our
invitation and our enumeration of the modes in which the controversy
might be conducted, so as to exclude the idea of oral discussion.

We observe with sorrow, and with diminished hope of benefit from
controversy, that you can so sink the interests of truth in personal
championship, as to meet our solemn unwillingness to entrust the gravest
questions to extempore dexterity and accidental recollection, with the
reply that in this respect we should be at least _equally_ situated.
Doubtless, Sir, if a display of personal prowess was our object, this
would be conclusive; but TRUTH is our object, and we dare not offer it
such worthless advocacy.

With respect to the instance alluded to by us, of a decision similar to
our own, our impression had been that reasons also similar to our own
were given at the time; and we can only regret, since this impression
seems to be false, that we quoted the case.

With regard to the “Improved Version,” we shall only say here, that it
has been raised to an importance in this discussion which is entirely
factitious. The differences between us must be settled upon principles
of interpretation and criticism recognized by all scholars; and if these
principles can be shown, in any respects, to condemn the “Improved
Version,” in those respects we shall be the first to abandon it, feeling
ourselves to be in nothing bound by it. When we said that, as
_Unitarians_, we had no canon or version of our own, we meant that we
are quite willing to accept the text as fixed by scholars, most of them
Trinitarians, on critical principles. We most cheerfully recognize the
fundamental principles of Scriptural inquiry, so clearly and soundly
stated yesterday evening by Dr. Tattershall; and although agreeing with
many of your ablest scholars, in thinking the received translation to
require corrections, and not approving of the morality of taking up a
position in defence of truth unnecessarily unfavourable; yet, were our
only object to display the ampler and superior Scriptural evidence for
Unitarianism than for Trinitarianism, the received translation would be
quite sufficient for our purpose.

Again reminding you that the word “discussion” was introduced into your
original invitation, which contained also reference to the controversial
practice of primitive times, and set forth the advantages of “hearing”
and “telling” together,

We remain,

Your fellow-labourers and fellow-Christians,

JAMES MARTINEAU.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
Feb. 14, 1839. HENRY GILES.

---------------------

_To the Revs. Thomas Byrth, Fielding Ould, and Hugh M‘Neile._

Gentlemen,—Your willingness to discuss the Unitarian and Trinitarian
controversy in the most satisfactory mode, has given us sincere
pleasure; and if we have seemed to press this matter upon your
acceptance, we assure you it was with the single desire that the
statements of both views, in their most accurate and perfect forms,
might be presented to the same minds through an unbiassing medium; an
object which could be obtained neither by the unequal distribution of
separate lectures, nor by means so necessarily imperfect as oral
discussion.

We shall be happy to arrange with you, at the earliest possible period,
the manner and conditions of our proposed discussion.

We shall be ready to conform ourselves to your wishes upon the subject;
but we would suggest the desirableness of the discussion being entered
on at once—partly because attention to it might now be secured, and
partly because in the seriousness and number of our mutual engagements,
this controversy should not be allowed to interfere with our other
duties and responsibilities longer than is necessary.

We are, Gentlemen,

Yours, with respect,

JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
JAMES MARTINEAU.
Feb. 14, 1839. HENRY GILES.

---------------------

_To the Revs. J. Martineau, J. H. Thom, and H. Giles._

Gentlemen,—I cannot permit our correspondence to terminate without a few
remarks on your letter, as published in the _Mercury_ of Friday last.

1. I regret that the “tone” of my last address should have given you any
offence, while I am wholly unconscious of any intention unnecessarily to
wound the feelings of those who, I am free to admit, have hitherto
written at least courteously, if not very candidly, upon the subjects
which have been recently submitted to the attention of the public. Allow
me distinctly to disclaim any attempt to charge you with _hypocrisy_, or
make it appear that you “secretly know as errors what you publicly
preach as truths.” I took occasion merely to express my surprise that
persons who seemed so anxious for an impartial hearing of their defence,
should “altogether decline” a proposal by which, as it appeared, and
still appears to me, that object might have been so satisfactorily
attained; and in the exercise of a charity that “hopeth all things,” I
sought to attribute your refusal to a latent and half-formed conviction
within you, that your principles, in whatsoever sincerity entertained
and professed, might not bear the light of such an investigation as that
to which they would have been subjected in a public _vivá voce_
discussion. Where is there any charge of hypocrisy here? May not a man
be perfectly sincere in the maintenance of an opinion, which he would
nevertheless be very unwilling to defend in oral debate, from a proper
apprehension of the force of argument with which it might be
encountered, and a secret consciousness of his own slender materials for
its support? Be assured it is not necessary for us to brand you with
_hypocrisy_, in order to convict you of _heresy_. We are willing to give
you every credit for honesty of intention and integrity of purpose,
while we cannot but suspect that you are fully aware of the difficulty
of maintaining the principles of Unitarianism on the ground of an
unmutilated and “unimproved” Bible.

Were I equally disposed with you to take offence, I too might inquire,
“in solemn sadness, whether it be deserved by us, or edifying to the
public mind,” that you should more than insinuate, though of course in
very polished phrases, that “we have proposed a platform controversy, in
order to catch the ear of a popular assembly, and to turn away attention
from weak points by oratorical artifices.” Is this your opinion of us?
If we thought so, “we should decline all discussion with you as
opponents too discreditable to be identified with a great question, or
to be considered as honourable representatives of your own party.” But
_we_ are not offended. We look upon your language as simply intended to
convey an admission that your system is unpopular; one that, from its
cold, and cheerless, and unimpassioned character, would seek in vain to
enlist on its behalf any measure of popular sympathy, or conciliate any
favour unless from those whom it had imbued with its own proud spirit,
and accustomed to the low temperature of its own frigid zone.

2. But, gentlemen, while I cheerfully receive the admonition on the
“tone” of my address which your letter _does_ contain, I have to
complain respecting the answer to a very simple question I had proposed,
which your letter _does not_ contain. As I am unwilling to incur the
hazard of again offending, I will forbear from more than hinting at the
semblance of rhetorical dexterity that appears in your perhaps
undesigned turning away of attention from the PRINCIPAL POINT which I
had submitted for your consideration, in order to fasten upon me a
groundless charge, and so challenge public sympathy in your favour, as
men branded with the character of hypocrites, and secretly cognizant of
errors which were openly preached as truths. We proposed to discuss with
you “the evidence of the genuineness, authenticity, and _inspiration_ of
the holy scriptures.” You replied that you do not “deny the
_genuineness_” and seek not “to alter the _translation_ of any part of
the authorized version,” which you prefer to the abandoned version of
Mr. Belsham and his associates. You were silent, however, about the
INSPIRATION. I ventured to inquire whether I was mistaken in supposing
you denied _the plenary inspiration_ of the authorized version? My words
were, “If I am mistaken here too, I pray to be set right.” In your
letter now before me there is not a word upon the subject; no answer to
my all-important inquiry. There is a little further disparagement of the
“improved version,” which, we are told, has been raised into a
“factitious importance in this controversy;” you will be the first to
“abandon it,” if it should be condemned by the ordinary principles of
critical interpretation—so far so good. But what of the INSPIRATION? Are
you either afraid or ashamed to speak out what you think on this
subject? I would not that you should be offended at the “tone” of my
interrogations; but again I must ask, what are your opinions upon the
_quality_ and _extent_ of scripture inspiration? The public are
anxiously expecting an answer to this solemn query, and our present
correspondence cannot close until it is answered. The way will then be
clear for our approaching discussion through the press; we shall then
understand each other, and shall have reconnoitred and appreciated the
character of the field upon which we are to take up our respective
positions. You say that “_truth_ is your object,” and not “personal
championship.” Well, then, let us have _the truth_ upon Unitarian views
of SCRIPTURAL INSPIRATION. All other argument can be only an unmeaning
play of words until this point is settled.

We are rejoiced to learn that you are satisfied with “the authorized
version,” and “the received translation,” for the purposes of our
present inquiry; and when you shall satisfy us that you admit the full
inspiration of _all and every part_ of that volume, we shall be in a
condition to inquire whether it presents “ampler and superior Scriptural
evidence for Unitarianism than for Trinitarianism.” We remember that Mr.
Belsham, in his Review of Mr. Wilberforce’s Treatise, has said, speaking
of the texts usually quoted by Trinitarians in proof of the proper deity
of Christ, that “Unitarians pledge themselves to show that they are
_all_ either _interpolated_, _corrupted_, or _misunderstood_.”—Review,
pp. 270, 272. They engage to get clearly rid of them altogether. _You_,
it would appear, have given up the _interpolations_ and _corruptions_;
the _misunderstandings_, we presume, still remain chargeable against us;
but whether on the ground of _ignorance_, or of mistaken confidence in
the _inspiration_ of the texts in question, we have yet to be informed.

You will pardon my anxiety for an answer upon this head, bearing in mind
that we regard it as opening wide a door for the introduction of
_infidelity_, so to give up _any portion_ of the sacred volume as being
not of inspired authority, as to render it doubtful whether _any
portion_ does possess that authority, and thus entirely neutralize the
effect of God’s message of mercy to the minds and hearts of men.

I remain, Gentlemen,

Yours, for the sake of the Gospel,

February 18, 1839. FIELDING OULD.

---------------------

_To the Rev. Fielding Ould._

Reverend Sir,—You proposed (in your letter of the 5th February) a
certain series of subjects as proper topics for the discussion between
us, and submitted the list to our notice for acceptance or rejection.
From this enumeration we struck out two particulars, _viz._, the
_authenticity_ of certain parts of the New Testament writings, on the
ground that we did not deny your postulates under that head; and the
_translation_ of certain other parts of the Scriptures, on the grounds
that, with yourself, we prefer, on the whole, the authorized version to
all others; that we would not be responsible for any new rendering
proposed in the Improved Version; and that, as we have nothing so absurd
as a _system of translation_ capable of _systematic_ treatment, any
special instances, in which we may think the common translation
inaccurate, had better be discussed in connection with the theological
doctrines affected by the texts in question.

These subjects being excluded from the list, the rest, comprising the
question of _inspiration_, and the _doctrines of your theology_, of
course stand over for discussion. We said nothing of these, because we
had no exception to take against them. As our _notice_ of the others was
to effect their removal, our “silence” about these was to _secure their
admission_.

The plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, or, if you really prefer it,
(as your phraseology seems to imply,) “the plenary inspiration of the
_authorized version_” remains then as an essential part of our
approaching controversy. Why you should complain that we do not step
aside with you individually, to render you an account of our belief in
this matter, we cannot divine, unless you think that, by tempting us
into your confessional by appeals to our conscience, you could impose
upon the “heretics” your penance at discretion. If it should be, that
this subject is likely to be committed to your hands in this
controversy, and you are merely anxious to know betimes what precisely
are the positions which you may be called upon to meet, a private
communication of your wish would be sufficient. The second lecture of
our series will be speedily published, and will furnish the information
which you desire.

We are sorry that you discover any want of “candour” in our last letter;
and surprised that, this being the case, you can esteem it “courteous.”
We regard a violation of “candour” as the greatest outrage upon
“courtesy;” and despise, above all things, the hollow and superficial
manners, which are empty of all guileless affections and Christian
sentiments. In saying that you charged us with hypocrisy, we committed
no breach of candour, but only the mistake, which we are now happy to
correct, of supposing that your language faithfully represented your
meaning. That you did not think of the _word_ “hypocrite” when you wrote
to us, we cheerfully believe; but that you thought of us as doing that
which makes a hypocrite, your own explanation renders more evident than
it was before. You attribute to us “a latent and half-formed
conviction,” that “our principles might not bear the light of
investigation,” and “a consciousness” of “the difficulty of maintaining
them.” Now there can be no “difficulty,” where the tribunal is wisely
chosen, in maintaining any set of opinions, except from the superior
force of the antagonist considerations; there can be no “consciousness”
of such “difficulty,” except from consciousness of this opposing
superiority;—to be conscious of a preponderant evidence in favour of any
system, is at heart to believe it; and he who believes one system, and
publicly upholds another, is, as we interpret the word, _a hypocrite_.
We perceive, however, that you made this charge without precisely
meaning it; and we think no more of it.

We disclaim any intention of hinting that you “proposed a platform
controversy, in order to catch the ear of a popular assembly, and to
turn away attention from weak points by oratorical artifices.” We simply
affirmed, that oral discussion would have afforded a better refuge for
our imputed “weakness” than the press. But surely it does not follow
that, because the consciously weak might prefer such a method, therefore
all who prefer it must be consciously weak. It would, indeed, be a
strange mistake of all the symptoms by which the characters of men can
be known, if we attributed to you any suspicion that you could be
mistaken. You are quite aware that your earnestness appears to us
perfectly sincere, and even to transgress the bounds of a modest
confidence.

We remain, Reverend Sir,

Yours, with Christian regard,

HENRY GILES.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
February 21, 1839. JAMES MARTINEAU.

---------------------

_To the Revs. J. Martineau, J. H. Thom, and H. Giles._

Gentlemen,—Before we proceed with our proposed discussion, it is
necessary to determine, with a little more of accuracy than has been
hitherto stated, what our controversy is to be about.

We thought that you, in common with Unitarians generally, acknowledged
the Scriptures of the New Testament, as contained in what is commonly
called “The Unitarian or Improved Version,” to be inspired of God, and
consequently of infallible truth.

This however you, as individuals, have disclaimed; and, therefore, we
are compelled to ask _what you do_ acknowledge INSPIRED REVELATION?

Is our discussion to be,

1. Upon the meaning of a mutually-acknowledged standard of truth? Or,

2. Upon the question, Is there any such standard? And if so, what is it?

We affirm the inspiration by God of the Holy Scriptures, as contained in
our authorized canon, and are willing to refer every question for
decision to their ascertained meaning.

Do you agree in this?

Our standard being known, it is a matter of obvious fairness that we
should ask to have yours stated.

Either you admit the divine inspiration, and consequent infallible
truth, of the Bible, or you do not.

Or, you so admit a part, and reject a part. You will be so good as to
state clearly how this matter stands.

Are you believers in a WRITTEN and INFALLIBLY-ACCURATE REVELATION from
God to man?

If so, _what is_ that Revelation?

If you admit only _parts_ of our Bible as inspired, you will oblige us
by stating _what parts_.

The character of the discussion must obviously depend upon this: is it
to be a discussion upon EVIDENCE or upon INTERPRETATION? It would be
manifestly a waste of time in us to enter upon the interpretation of
what you might afterwards get rid of, (so far, at least, as you are
concerned,) by declaring it only the opinion of a _fallible man_.

We remain, Gentlemen,

Yours, for the sake of truth,

HUGH M‘NEILE,
FIELDING OULD,
March 4th, 1839. THOMAS BYRTH.

---------------------

_To the Revs. H. M‘Neile, F. Ould, and T. Byrth._

Gentlemen,—You ask us, Is our discussion to be,

1. “Upon the meaning of a mutually-acknowledged standard of TRUTH?” Or,

2. “Upon the question, Is there any such standard? And if so, what is
it?”

We answer, distinctly, that our controversy is upon the meaning,
ascertained by INTERPRETATION, of the _Hebrew_ and _Greek_ Scriptures.
Should any questions of criticism arise respecting what is the text to
be interpreted, these must, of course, be argued separately, upon purely
_critical_ grounds.

We conceive that the real controversy between us respects the nature of
Christianity itself;—you holding the Revelation to consist in doctrines
deducible from the written words; we holding the Revelation to be
expressed in the character and person of Jesus Christ, and to be
conveyed to us through a faithful and authentic record. Which of these
two ideas is Scriptural?—that is our controversy.

Of course, “the standard” by which we must test “the truth” of these
ideas is the New Testament, and the Hebrew Scriptures, so far as they
throw light on its contents. Whichever view of Christianity is supported
by the _meaning_ of this standard, is the true one. The method of
ascertaining the meaning of any writings is the same, whether those
writings are of natural or supernatural origin; so that the process of
interpretation may go on, undisturbed by any reference to the theory of
verbal inspiration. The admission of an “infallible truth” in the Bible
(which, however, is known with _certainty_ only to God; for you, after
admitting it, are disputing with heretics of your own communion what it
is), cannot alter, in any respect, the true grounds of our controversy.
It is a controversy of interpretation, and no theory of verbal
inspiration can make it anything else.

This theory, however, we conceive to be altogether fallacious, both in
its principles and its results; and if you wish to make it the subject
of our controversy, we have no objection. We leave it to your choice,
whether we are to discuss the theory of verbal inspiration, or whether
we are to discuss the meaning of the original Scriptures, as ascertained
by the acknowledged principles of interpretation.

We confess to not a little surprise that three clergymen, coming forward
to discuss Unitarianism, should be found to express themselves so
inaccurately, or from such defective information, as to speak of “the
Unitarian or Improved Version,” and to represent the work, thus falsely
described, as acknowledged by Unitarians generally to contain the New
Testament as inspired by God. The theory of verbal inspiration, which we
deny altogether, we are not likely to claim in favour of a Unitarian
translator. We have repeatedly stated, that the “Improved Version,” is
not the “Unitarian Version;” nor is it “commonly” so “called.” And now
we say, once more, that our controversy is not about the Improved
Version, but about the Greek Testament.

When you accepted our invitation, with its terms, it was understood that
all the preliminaries of our controversy were to be arranged by mutual
agreement. You were aware, and we have in our letters distinctly stated,
that the theory of verbal inspiration stood as a part of that
controversy; you knew, also, that in a few days a distinct statement of
our opinions upon the nature of the Bible, in the form of a printed
lecture, would be before the public. We therefore look upon your letter,
in the _Courier_ of Wednesday last, as altogether unnecessary; and we
answer, thus publicly, what ought to have been matter of private
communication, only because we are resolved not to allow any
informalities, on your parts, to prevent our coming to a public
discussion of our respective views of Christianity.

We are, Gentlemen,

Yours respectfully,

JAMES MARTINEAU.
JOHN H. THOM.
March 11, 1839. HENRY GILES.

---------------------

_To the Revs. J. Martineau, J. H. Thom, and H. Giles._

Gentlemen,—In our last letter we gave up the “Improved Version,” so far
as you, _as individuals_, are concerned, because, _as individuals_, you
disclaimed it. We are surprised, therefore, that you should revert to
it, and the more so, because you have now ventured to say, not only that
_you_ disclaim it, but also, in the face of known facts, that it is not
“the Unitarian version,” nor is it “commonly so called.” When you
disclaimed it _for yourselves_, we did not demur. But when you go on to
disclaim it _for the Unitarian body_, (for which, by the way, you have
no authority,) we strenuously deny your assertion, and call in evidence
the language of all the best writers upon the controversy.

You have misstated our question. We did _not_ ask, “Is our discussion to
be upon the meaning of a mutually-acknowledged standard of _Scripture_?”
We did ask, “Is it to be upon the meaning of a mutually-acknowledged
standard of _truth_?” We receive the Scripture as a _standard of truth_.
The substitution of the one word for the other, in this question, has
mystified your whole letter.

We collect, however, from your letter, and from Mr. Martineau’s sermon,
to which you refer us, (and which we consequently conclude contains the
sentiments of you all,)

1. That you do not believe in a _written and infallibly-accurate
Revelation_ from God to man.

2. That Paul the apostle may have “_reasoned inaccurately_,” and
“_speculated falsely_.”[7]

3. And that, consequently, you feel yourselves at liberty to judge his
statements (and all the statements of Scripture) as you do those of any
other books.

You seem to think that this is of little consequence, and say that “the
process of interpretation may go on, undisturbed by any reference to the
theory of verbal inspiration.”

We reply that such a process can lead to nothing but waste of time. For
when we shall have proved some great truth, or condemned some fatal
error, upon the authority of Paul, or some other inspired writer, you
have kept an open door for yourselves to escape from the whole force of
our demonstration, by saying that, in the words on which we rely, the
sacred writers “_reasoned inaccurately_,” or “_speculated
falsely_,”—while, if any passages in those writers _seem_ to favour your
views, you have adroitly retained the privilege of ascribing to them a
sort of inspiration.[8]

No, gentlemen, we are not to be deceived so, into an attempt to fix the
chameleon’s colour. If the apostles may “reason inaccurately,” and
“speculate falsely;” if the inspiration under which they wrote did not
infallibly preserve them from error, then there is no standard of truth
upon earth. Of what avail is it, then, to refer to the _Greek_
Testament, or the _Hebrew_ Scriptures? The Scripture, instead of being
(what David called it, speaking as he was moved by the Holy Ghost) “a
lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our path,” degenerates into a
mixture of light and darkness, which we dare not implicitly follow, but
of which we must judge by some superior light in ourselves.

We observe, further, that, according to the light that is in you,
historical proof of miracles having been wrought in attestation of what
the writers of Scripture say, would NOT be proof against inaccuracy in
their reasonings, or falsehood in their speculations.

This notable conclusion you come to, by elevating nature into the
miraculous, and thus depressing the miraculous into the natural; since
you say that the whole force of the impression made by proofs from
miracles arises from a “SUPPOSED _contrast_” between miracle and
nature.[9]

You have thus advanced a step beyond common Deism, and rendered
yourselves inaccessible even by miracles. This is conclusive, and
demands the serious attention of all who have hitherto been disposed to
receive instruction from you. We confess that we can go no further! for,
if there be only a _supposed contrast_ between miracles and nature, we
cannot prove the attesting interposition of God on behalf of the
statements of Scripture, and must give up as worthless the appeal which
Jesus makes to his miracles, in answer to the inquiry of John’s
disciples: “_Go_,” said he, “_and show John again those things which ye
do see and hear; the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the
poor have the Gospel preached to them_.”—Luke vii, 22. Upon your
principles, gentlemen, this appeal is worthless; for even if the
wonderful things here stated be established as historical facts, still
they contain no proof, because between these wonders and the course of
nature there is only “a _supposed_ contrast.”

Thus then, by your avowal, that even miracles cannot prove inspiration,
you are left in undisputed possession of the field of infidelity. We
have no common property of reason with you, and without determining
whether men who reject the evidence of miracles are of an order of
beings above or below ourselves, we feel that discussion with them is
impracticable.

While, therefore, we shall continue to use all lawful methods of
argument and persuasion, in the hope of being useful to those who,
though called Unitarians, are not so entirely separated from our common
humanity as you seem to be, we have no hesitation in saying that, with
regard to _yourselves_ as individuals, there appears to be a more
insurmountable obstacle in the way of discussion than would be offered
by ignorance of one another’s language; because the want of a common
medium of language could be supplied by an interpreter, but the want of
a common medium of reason cannot be supplied at all.

We remain, Gentlemen, yours respectfully,

HUGH M‘NEILE.
FIELDING OULD.
March 18th, 1839. THOMAS BYRTH.

-----

Footnote 7:

_To grant that Paul reasons, and be startled at the idea that he may
reason incorrectly—to admit that he speculates, and yet be shocked at
the surmise that he may speculate falsely_,—to praise his skill in
illustration, yet shrink in horror when something less apposite is
pointed out,—_is an obvious inconsistency_. The human understanding
cannot perform its functions without taking its share of the chances
of error; nor can a critic of its productions have any perception of
their truth and excellence, without conceding the possibility of
fallacies and faults. We must give up our admiration of the apostles
as men, if we are to listen to them always as oracles of
God.—_Martineau’s Sermon_, pp. 34, 35.

Footnote 8:

I believe St. Matthew to have been _inspired_; but I do not believe
him to have been _infallible_.—_Sermon_, p. 27.

Footnote 9:

All peculiar _consecration_ of miracle is obtained by a precisely
proportioned _desecration_ of nature; it is out of a supposed contrast
between the two, that the whole force of the impression
arises.—_Sermon_, p. 24.

---------------------

_To the Revs. H. M‘Neile, F. Ould, and T. Byrth._

Gentlemen,—We regret the misstatement of your question, which appeared
at the commencement of our letter of the 13th instant. We regret still
more that it did not occur to you to attribute it to its real cause,—the
carelessness of a printer or transcriber. In the autograph manuscript
which remains in our hands, your question is correctly stated thus—“Is
our discussion to be upon a mutually-acknowledged standard _of truth_?”
How the word “truth” became changed into “scripture,” we cannot tell;
and not having read our letter after it was in print, we were unaware of
the mistake until you pointed it out. Whatever “mystification” it
introduced, you will consider as now removed.

Your letter announces your retirement from the promised controversy.
Knowing that in taking this step you could not put yourselves in the
right, it is only natural perhaps that you should resolve to set your
opponents in the wrong, and to cover your own retreat by throwing scorn
on their religious character. Theology appears in this instance to have
borrowed a hint from the “laws of honour;” and as in the world a
“passage of arms” is sometimes evaded, under the pretence that the
antagonist is too little _of a gentleman_, so in the church a polemical
collision may be declined, because the opponent is _too little of a
believer_.

You refuse to fulfil your pledge to the public and ourselves on two
grounds:—

I. Because we do not acknowledge the plenary inspiration of the
Scriptures.

II. Because we think it impossible to infer from miracles the mental
infallibility of the performer. It is of no use, you say, to argue about
divine truth with those who do not believe in “a written and infallibly
accurate revelation from God to man.”

We will concede, for the moment, and under protest, your narrow meaning
of the words “inspiration” and “revelation;” and without disturbing your
usage of them, we submit that the reasons advanced by you afford not
even a plausible pretext for having violated your pledge. First, as to
the plea that we are put out of the controversy by our unexpected denial
of the intellectual infallibility of the sacred writers; and that to
argue about the meaning of the Bible is a waste of time, till its verbal
inspiration is established. We reply,—

I. That it was you yourselves who started this very question of
inspiration for argument between us. In his letter of February 18th, Mr.
Ould gives this account of our projected controversy: “We proposed to
discuss with you the EVIDENCE of the genuineness, authenticity, and
INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES;” he taunts us with _reluctance_ to
take up this “greatest of testimonial questions,” with “refusing to come
forward boldly, and _debate it fairly before the church_.”[10] We _have_
come forward boldly, and this is now the alleged reason why there is to
be _no debate at all before the church_. Moreover, at the time when you
said “we accept your terms,” you regarded us as holding the very
opinions which are now made the excuse for a retreat; in your first
lecture they are made a chief ground of indictment against us, and pages
are crowded with citations from Unitarian writers, expressing those same
sentiments, which, when avowed by your own opponents, are to make them
unfit to be addressed, and to exempt you from the duty of reply. Of the
spirit of this proceeding, observers of honourable mind must judge;
they, as well as you, are well aware, that to pronounce men unworthy of
attack, is itself an attack of the last degree of bitterness.

II. Your refusal to settle with us the meaning of Scripture till the
plenary inspiration is acknowledged, is in plain contradiction to your
own principles. You fix the imputation of _deception_ on our statement,
that “the process of interpretation may go on undisturbed by any
reference to the theory of verbal inspiration.” Yet is this only a
repetition of what Mr. Byrth himself says, “In whatever light the
Christian Scriptures are regarded, whether as the result of plenary
inspiration, as we Trinitarians believe, or as the uninspired
productions of the first teachers of Christianity, or even as the
forgeries of imposture, _the meaning_ of their contents is a _question
apart from all others_.”[11]

Dr. Tattershall, in common with all sound divines, makes it the _first
step_ of scriptural inquiry to “examine the contents” of the books under
the guidance of the following principle: that “any message coming from
God must be consistent with the character of the same holy being, as
exhibited in his works,” and must have “consistency with itself:”[12]
and he justly states, that whether we ought to take the _last step_, of
admitting the divine authority of the doctrines, must still be
contingent on those doctrines, “being themselves wise and
holy,”—“lessons worthy of God.”[13] These principles are violated,
unless our investigation into your doctrines is taken in the following
order:—

I. Are your doctrines _true to the sense of Scripture_? If _not_, the
controversy ends here; if they _are_, then,

II. Are they _self-consistent; reconcilable with the teachings of God’s
works, pure and holy_? If _not_, the controversy ends _here_; if they
_are_, then,

III. Do they come to us clothed with divine authority, and conveyed in
the language of plenary inspiration?

Your system, then, must establish its _existence in the Bible_ (which is
a matter of interpretation), and its _credibility in itself_ (which we
presume there must be _some criterion_ to determine), _before_ the
question of inspiration is capable of being discussed. We deny both
these preliminaries; protesting that we cannot find your system in the
Scriptures; and that if we could, it appears to us so far from
“self-consistent,” “wise and holy,” and “worthy of God,” as exceedingly
to embarrass the claims to divine authority, of any writings which
contain it. It was then in implicit obedience to your own rules that we
proposed to let the question of interpretation take the lead; and no
less so, that we presume to form a judgment respecting the internal
character of doctrines professing to be scriptural. Permit us to ask
how, but by some “light in ourselves,” we are to determine whether
doctrines are “wise and holy,” “self-consistent,” and “worthy of God?”

Secondly. You plead that we have forfeited our claim on the fulfilment
of your engagement, by a statement of opinion in our second lecture, to
this effect: that miracles do not enable us to infer the intellectual
infallibility of the performer. This, it seems, is an unexpected heresy,
and cancels all promises. You appear to be affected by the Popish
tendencies of the age; and to have adopted the notion, that no faith is
to be kept with heretics. On this point we remark as follows:—

1st. We are astonished at your assertion, that this idea about miracles
deprives us of any “common medium of reason” with you. Did you not
“propose to discuss with us” the “evidence of the plenary inspiration of
the holy Scriptures,” under the persuasion that we should take the
negative side? In such discussion, would you not have argued from the
miracles to the inspiration? And how did you suppose that we should
reply? You were well aware that we should _admit_ the miracles; and
equally well aware that we should _deny_ the plenary inspiration of
those that wrought them. It cannot be supposed that, at this point, you
would have had no more to say; but you would have proceeded, as many
able writers have already done, to seek some “common medium of
reason,”—some considerations, that is, having force with both parties;
by which you might hope to fasten the disputed connection between your
premises and your conclusion.

2nd. We are still more astonished to hear that this sentiment puts us “a
step beyond common Deism,” “in undisputed possession of the field of
infidelity,” and even in “separation from our common humanity;” seeing
that the opinion has been held by

BISHOP SHERLOCK:—Who says, “Miracles cannot prove _the truth_ of any
doctrine; and men do not speak accurately when they say the doctrines
are proved by the miracles; for, in truth, there is _no connection_
between miracles and doctrines.”[14]

JOHN LOCKE:—“Even in those books which have the greatest proof of
Revelation from God, and the attestation of miracles to confirm their
being so, _the miracles are to be judged by the doctrine, not the
doctrine by the miracles_.”[15]

DR. SAMUEL CLARKE:—“We can hardly affirm, with any certainty, that any
particular effect, how great or miraculous soever it may seem to us, is
beyond the power of all created beings (whom he explains further to be,
‘subordinate intelligences, _good_ or _evil_ angels,’) in the universe
to produce.” He believes the Devil to “be able, by reason of his
invisibility, to work _true and real miracles_;” and “whether such
(_i.e._ miraculous) interposition be the immediate work of God, or of
some good or evil angel, can hardly be discovered merely by the work
itself.”

He accordingly lays down _the conditions under which_ the miracles will
prove the doctrine.[16]

BISHOP FLEETWOOD:—“Spirits may perform most strange and astonishing
things,—may convey men through the air, or throw a mountain two miles at
a cast.”[17]

The notions expressed by the last two writers, respecting the superhuman
agency of good and evil spirits, evidently destroy, no less than the
more philosophical principle of Sherlock and Locke, all power of
reasoning from miracles, as such, to the divine authority and
inspiration of the performers. You cannot be ignorant of the fact, that
these notions prevailed among all the Fathers of both the Greek and
Latin churches; that they were almost universal among Christians till
very recent times; and that your own church lodges with the Bishop of
the Diocese a discretionary power to license clergymen to cast out
devils.[18]

Nor need we remind you that, by yet another process of thought, the
Society of Friends assigns to miracles the rank which you think so
profane. “We know,” says Barclay on this subject, “that the devil can
form a sound of words, and convey it to the outward ear; that he can
easily deceive the outward senses, by making things appear which are
not. Yea, do we not see that the Jugglers and Mountebanks can do as much
as all that, by their legerdemain? God forbid then that the saint’s
faith should be founded on so fallacious a foundation as man’s outward
and fallible senses.”[19] And he urges, “that there must be other ways
of ascertaining divine truth; for as to miracles, John the Baptist and
divers of the Prophets wrought none that we hear of, and yet were both
immediately and extraordinarily sent.”[20] By different modes of
thinking, all these (Christians?) have arrived at the sentiment in
question, so that we occupy “the field of infidelity,” without being
“separated from” at least a goodly portion of “our humanity.” That this
sentiment should be of so deep a dye of Deism is the more remarkable,
because it is advanced and vindicated as a _scriptural sentiment_,—a
plea which, however foolish, can be shown to be so, only by discussing
_the interpretation_ of the New Testament. You have proposed no
explanation of the state of the Apostles’ minds before the day of
Pentecost. On that day they either did, or they did not, become more
enlightened than before. If they did not, the gift of the Holy Spirit
conferred no illumination; if they did, they were deficient in light
before; and the miraculous powers they had possessed and exercised did
not imply infallibility. We thought, indeed, that the comparative
narrowness of their views before this period had been universally
admitted. With respect to the appeal which in the presence of the
Baptist’s disciples our Lord makes to his miraculous acts, you are quite
aware that we do _not_ regard it as “worthless,” though you say we
“_must_” do so. These acts (the _climax_ of which, however, was no
miracle at all,—“the poor have the Gospel preached to them,”) fully
answered _the purpose for which they were appealed to_, viz., to
determine whether Jesus was “He that should come,” or whether John was
“to look for another;” for as Bishop Sherlock remarks though miracles
may not (he says “_cannot_) prove the _truth_ of any doctrine,” they
“prove _the commission_ of the person who does them to proceed from
God.”[21] We repeat, then, that we have started no topic which you did
not invite; we have taken up no method of discussion which your own
rules did not prescribe; we have advanced no idea for which your own
Church should be unprepared. You have quitted this controversy without
any justification from the unexpected nature of _our sentiments_, and we
are persuaded that you can plead no discourtesy in our proposals
respecting the _mechanical arrangements_. On this point we think it
right to state thus publicly the overtures which we made to you, through
the excellent clergyman who communicated with us as your representative.
An objection having been urged by Mr. Ould to discussion through the
newspapers, on the ground that they are read by “the ignorant scoffer,
the sceptical, the profane,” we proposed the following plan:—That for
twelve or any limited number of weeks, a joint weekly pamphlet of
thirty-two pages should be published, each party furnishing sixteen
pages; that the first number of the series should contain a positive
statement, _from each party_, of its fundamental principles in religion,
of that which it undertook to assail, and that which it undertook to
defend; and that within the limits of this programme, the replies in the
subsequent numbers should confine themselves. Thus each party would have
chosen its own ground, at first; and both would have disappeared from
the public view together, at last. This proposal was rejected without
any reason being assigned, except that there were “too many difficulties
in the way;” and though all preliminaries were to be settled “by
previous agreement,” we were told that in the following _Courier_ we
should find a letter addressed to us, which we might answer in whatever
way we thought proper. The public who have watched the proceedings in
this matter will bear witness, with our consciences, that we were _not
the first_ to enter this controversy; that we have _not been the first_
to leave it; and that, in its progress, we have departed from no pledge,
and been guilty of no evasion.

And now, Gentlemen, accept from us in conclusion, our solemn protest
against the language of unmeasured insult, in which, under the cover of
sanctity, the associated clergymen whom you represent, have thought
proper to speak of our religion; against the accusations personally
addressed to us, in the presence of 3,000 people, by the Lecturers in
Christ Church, of “mean subterfuges,” “of sneering,” of “savage grins,”
of “damnable blasphemy,” of “the greatest imaginable guilt,” of “doing
despite to the Spirit of Grace,” of “the most odious of crimes against
the Majesty of Heaven,” and in common with all Unitarians of forming our
belief, from “the blindness of graceless hearts,” too bad “to have been
touched by any spirit of God,” and against the visible glee, fierce as
Tertullian’s, with which “the faithful” are reminded that ere long, _we
must and shall_ bow our proud knees, whether we like it or not, to the
object of their peculiar worship;—so that they are sure of their triumph
in heaven, however questionable it may be on earth. You began the
controversy by ascribing to us one shade of “infidelity;” you end it by
ascribing to us a blacker. Beneath “the lowest deep,” there is it seems
“a lower still.” We have sat quietly under all this, bearing the rude
friction upon everything that is most dear to us, assured that if
anything in heaven or earth be certain, it is this;—that no spirit of
God ever spake thus, or thus administered the poison of human passions,
falsely labelled as the medicine of a divine love. What is the
difference between your religion and ours, that this high tone (than
which, to a pure moral taste, nothing surely can be _lower_) should be
assumed against us? We believe, no less than you, in an infallible
Revelation (though had we the misfortune to doubt it, we might be, in
the sight of God, neither worse nor better than yourselves); you in a
Revelation of an unintelligible Creed to the understanding; we in a
Revelation of moral perfection, and the spirit of duty to the heart; you
in a Revelation of the metaphysics of Deity; we in a Revelation of the
character and providence of the Infinite Father; you in a Redemption
which saves the few, and leaves with Hell the triumph after all; we in a
Redemption which shall restore to all at length the image and the
immortality of God: we _do_ reserve, as you suggest, “_a sort of
inspiration_” for the founders of Christianity, “a sort” as much higher
than your cold, dogmatical, scientific inspiration, as the intuitions of
conscience are higher than the predications of logic, and the free
spirit of God, than the petty precision of men. We believe in a
spiritual and moral Revelation, most awakening, most sanctifying, most
holy; which _words_, being the signs of hard and definite ideas, could
never express, and which is therefore pourtrayed in a mind divinely
finished for the purpose, acting awhile on Earth and publicly
transferred to Heaven. All men may see that such a Revelation
corresponds well with the medium which conveys it; but a set of
scholastic propositions, like Articles and Creeds, might as well have
been written on the sky; and many a bitter doubt and bitterer
controversy might have been spared.

We believe, Gentlemen, that the minds of serious and considerate persons
are weary of the aggressions of Churches upon the private and secret
faith of the individual heart; that they will not long be forced to live
on the dry husks of Creeds which have lost the kernel of true life; nor
accept mere puzzles as divine mysteries. It is at the peril of all
religion that its illimitable truths are embalmed in definite formulas,
and the abyss of God confidently measured by thrusting out the foot-rule
of ecclesiastical wisdom. The things most holy cannot without injury be
thus turned from the contemplation of the affections, to the small
criticism of the intellect; and the acute and polished dividing-knife of
dialectics, when applied to cut theology into propositions, is apt to
leave scarce a shred of faith.

That all professing ministers of the Gospel may speedily turn from their
divisions of belief to a hearty union of spirit, is the desire and
prayer of

Us, who in this temper, and in better times, might have been
owned as

Your fellow-labourers,

JAMES MARTINEAU.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
March 25th, 1839. HENRY GILES.

-----

Footnote 10:

Rev. F. Ould’s Letter of February 11.

Footnote 11:

Rev. T. Byrth’s Lecture, Part I. p. 114.

Footnote 12:

Rev. Dr. Tattershall’s Lecture on the Integrity of the Canon, p. 69.

Footnote 13:

“Whatever lessons of instruction or doctrines they teach us, _these
doctrines being themselves wise and holy_, must have been delivered
under a divine sanction, and therefore possess divine authority.

“If he (that is, the person who performs miracles) also teaches
lessons,—_lessons worthy of God_,—these lessons undoubtedly come to us
clothed with divine authority.”—_Dr. Tattershall’s Lecture_, pp. 70,
71.

Footnote 14:

Sherlock’s Discourses, No. 10, Hughes’s edition, Vol. I. p. 197, and
No. 15, Vol. I. p. 278.

Footnote 15:

Lord King’s Life of Locke, p. 125.

Footnote 16:

Sermons at the Boyle Lecture, Prop. xiv.

Footnote 17:

Essay on Miracles, p. 99, _seq._, as quoted by Farmer in his
Dissertation on Miracles, chap. i. § 3.

Footnote 18:

“No minister or ministers shall, _without the licence and direction of
the Bishop of the Diocese_, first obtained and had under his hand and
seal, ... attempt, upon any pretence whatsoever, either of possession
or obsession, by fasting and prayer, to cast out any devil or devils,
under pain of the imputation of imposture or cozenage, and deposition
from the ministry.”—_Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical_, lxxii.

Footnote 19:

Apology for the True Christian Divinity, Prop. ii, pp. 35, 36.

Footnote 20:

Ibid. Prop. x. p. 296.

Footnote 21:

Discourses, No. 10, Hughes’s edition, vol. i. p. 197.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE

PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE

OF THE

UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

An attempt has been made, in a preface to the Lecture to which the
following pages are a reply, to break the force, by anticipation, of the
statements they contain. The Answerer, however, evidently did not hear
the statements; and the preface proceeds upon some rumour of what was
said. If Clergymen are conscientiously prevented from going to hear
Unitarians, they ought also to be conscientiously prevented from
answering what they did not hear. I am represented as saying that
Trinitarians do not gather, but _lecture_: I said Trinitarianism does
not gather, but _scatters_. I am represented as arguing the tendency of
Trinitarianism to Popery from the recent movement of the Oxford Tract
divines in that direction: I argued the tendency of Trinitarianism to
Popery _from its fundamental principles_, and I referred to the Oxford
movement as one of the visible manifestations of the demonstrated
tendency.

I shall notice the instances in which the Preface proceeds upon anything
like a true apprehension of what was said—

1. Page vii. viii.—“When men tell us that Jesus did not weep over
_errors of opinion_, we maintain that it was the ‘error of opinion’
which led them to reject him as the Messiah over which he lamented.”
Now, 1. Is the unbelief of the Jews in the Christ, when he was
exhibiting his divine credentials in his Character and in his Miracles
before their eyes and to their hearts, in any respect similar to our
unbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity, which we, accepting both the
Scriptures and Christ, declare we cannot find to be authorized by
either? And 2. Is it not evident that Jesus attributed the unbelief of
the Jews to _Moral_ Causes, and that therefore, and _only_ therefore, he
condemned it? “This is the Condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, _because their deeds
were evil_.” John iii. 19.

2. Page viii.—“But these principles involve a violation of unity.” And
what if they do? Did not our Saviour emphatically declare, “Think not
that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace but a
sword.” 1. Christ is here not describing the final purpose of his
Mission nor the natural operation of his Spirit, but the immediate
opposition and contention which his religion would excite both in Jew
and Gentile before it rooted out the old Faiths: And 2. The Christ is
not here alluding to differences between _Christians themselves_,
between those who did accept him; but to the necessary conflict of the
Spirit of Jesus with the Antagonist spirits of Judaism and Heathenism.
This also is the great subject of the Book of Revelations.

3. Page xi.—“But it is a priestly spirit which says, ‘you must
believe.’” This ought to be reckoned with the instances in which the
answer proceeds upon an incorrect rumour of what was said; which was to
this effect,—“that it is the priestly spirit, whose constant cry is,
unless you believe _this doctrine_, and unless you believe _that
doctrine_, you cannot be saved.” Belief in Jesus, entire spiritual Trust
in him, as, for all providential purposes, one with God, we have
explicitly stated as our view of the essentials of Christianity.

Page xxi.—We do not know how far the Author extends his approval of “the
tactics of holy war.” For ourselves we disapprove of all such tactics,
especially the tactics of substituting a mere illustration or practical
verification of an argument, for the argument itself, and then dealing
with the illustration as if there was no general principle behind it, as
if the illustration was represented as _the grounds_ of the principle,
when it is only represented as one of its outward operations. And yet
this “argumentum a particulari ad universale,” is one which the author
employs in his description of Unitarianism in almost every page of his
Lecture.

J. H. T.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE

PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE

OF THE

UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

---------------------

COLOSSIANS I. 27, 28.—_Christ in you, the hope of glory: whom we preach,
warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we
may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus._

GALATIANS II. 4, 5.—_And that because of false brethren unawares brought
in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in
Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage; to whom we
gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of
the gospel might continue with you._

Were some stranger to our religion inquiring what it is to be a
Christian, there are two quarters from which he might derive his ideas
of that character. He might draw near to him who is the only perfect
expression of Christianity, and when he had sat at the feet of Jesus,
listening with hushed heart, and then arisen and joined himself to the
meek Prophet of Mercy on his way of Love, he might receive from Christ
his impressions of Christianity and catch from the living Master the
type of a disciple: or he might turn for information to the Christians
of the day, selecting for examination the largest and most prominent
classes, and so gather from the common specimen his impressions of their
temper, their spirit, and their faith. Each of these modes of inquiry
would produce a result of Truth; but the one would be a Truth of
reality, and the other only a Truth of description; the one would
present to us what we were seeking, the true idea of a Christian; the
other would show with what degree of faithfulness Christians had
preserved the spirit of the original, or whether in the copy, in the
distant reflection, the features had been faded, marred, distorted; the
one would furnish us with the great Master’s idea of a Disciple, the
other would exhibit the Disciple as a representative of the Master, and
assuming to be his Image to the world; in a word, the one would be
Christ’s idea of a Christian; the other would be only a Christian’s idea
of Christ. Oh, thanks be to God for the _written_ Gospel, for the
Epistles written on men’s hearts, the living transcripts, give us no
worthy ideas of Christ; and were it not for those silent witnesses which
speak from a passionless page, and cannot be made to wear the garb of
party, which reflect Christ’s realities, and not man’s ideas, the Image
of Jesus had long since been irrecoverably lost!

Let us then for a moment place ourselves beside Jesus, and learn from
the Christ what it is to be a Christian. I hear him inviting the weary
and the heavy laden to come and find rest unto their souls. I listen for
that doctrine of rest, the faith that gives the sin-bound peace. I hear
him speak of God, and they are indeed healing words of peace, intended
to quell a superstition and a controversy: “God is a spirit: the hour
cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in
spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.”[22] I
hear him speak of Duty: “The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: This is the first
Commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. This do and thou shalt live.” I hear him speak of
Heaven: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
Heaven. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” “The kingdom of God cometh not with
observation, neither shall they say lo here, or lo there, for behold the
kingdom of God is within you.”[23] I hear him speak of Sin, melted, and
transformed into penitence: “To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth
little. Thy faith hath saved thee. Go in peace. Sin no more, lest a
worse thing come upon thee.” I hear him speak of DISCIPLESHIP: “He that
hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he
that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and
will manifest myself to him.”[24] “Herein is my Father glorified, that
ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. If ye keep my
commandments ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s
commandments, and abide in His love. Ye are my friends if ye do
whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the
servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends:
for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto
you.” “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have
love one to another.”[25]

We turn now from the words to the life of the great Teacher, in the
endeavour to get a more definite idea of Duty, Discipleship, and Faith.
The character of Jesus is the best, fullest, and truest interpretation
of the words of Jesus. His life is his own translation of his own
precepts into the language of action. We surely cannot be far from the
true sources of Christianity when we first drink his words into our
hearts, and then follow him with reverent steps and with gazing eyes, to
watch his own illustrations of those words, to behold the spirit
breathing in the life, and from the fulness of his character to learn
the fulness of his precepts. Surely Christ embodied and impersonated his
own teachings. Surely the life of Christ is undoubted Christianity.
Surely his character is Christian Duty; and his destiny Christian Faith.
Surely he knew and exhibited the practical tendencies of his own
doctrines; and surely to set him up at the fountain-head of our moral
being, as God’s image to the conscience, and to strive in all things to
be like unto him, “whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every
man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ
Jesus,”—cannot be to preach “another gospel,” or to mistake fatally the
essentials of Discipleship. “If a man love me, he will keep my words,
and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our
abode with him.”[26] The definition of a Christian, when deduced from
the words and the life of the Christ himself, thus comes out to be—one
who TRUSTS himself in all things to that God of whom Jesus was the
image; and who CONFORMS himself in all things to that will of God of
which Jesus was the perfect expression. “This is life eternal that they
might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast
sent.”[27]

Turn we now to a different quarter for an answer to our inquiry what it
is to be a Christian; from the one Master to the multitude of
professors; from the original image, distinct and bright, to the
transmitted reflections, all claiming to be genuine copies; from the
single voice, sweet and clear, to the confusion of jarring tongues; from
the pure fountain to the impure streams; from Christ to Christians. I am
entirely guiltless of the intention of satire, but it is quite
impossible to avoid the appearance of it in any attempt to give the
features of Christianity as they appear in the Christians of the day, in
those, that is, who claim to be Christians exclusively; for the tamest
truth of description excites ideas of the true Christ, so contrasted,
that it has without intention all the effect of sarcasm. Surely a
stranger to the only true source of our religion, examining its actual
forms as they exist in the world, and selecting its characteristics from
that which is largest and most prominent, would not be guilty of
misrepresentation, if he described a Christian as one who was shut up
within the narrowest circle of religious ideas; who identified himself
and his opinions with absolute Truth; who idolized himself and his sect
as the only friends of God; who was so unconscious of a liability to
err, that he breathed, unknowingly, an atmosphere of infallibility, and
insulted the Rights of other men, not more fallible than himself,
without perceiving the invasion;—one so used to arrogate to himself and
to his own party, all excellence and all truth, that he starts in
surprise, innocent of what can be meant, when he is told that he is
pressing on the liberties of other minds, who, with as deep an interest
as he can have in their own salvation, have searched into these things
and read differently the mind of God;—as one who regards a few
metaphysical propositions, confessedly unintelligible, as the only hope
of human salvation, and who, in the confidence of this faith, speaks to
his fellow men as if he had secret council with God; assumes to be on “a
religious level” nearer to the spirit of the Most High, who, on that
more elevated standing, drops more readily into his heart communications
from Heaven;—and who, when he pays any regard to other men at all, looks
down upon them from an eminence; assumes as proved their ignorance,
their errors, and their sins; insults their opinions; treats with no
brotherly respect the convictions of Truth and the dictates of
Conscience which to them are Voices from the living God; denies that
they have equal zeal for truth, or equal ability to discover it; scoffs
at the idea of religious equality, and looks amazed when others tell
him, though it be in apostolic words, that they will not “give place by
subjection, no, not for an hour;” and finally adds mockery to insult and
wrong, by telling the men whom he so treats, that all this is Christian
affection, and an interest in their souls.

It is painful to put last in order, not the true, but the untrue idea of
a Christian, and therefore to set us right, I will present the original
picture again in apostolic words. “Hereby we do know that we know him if
we keep his commandments.” “Whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the
love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.” “If ye know
that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is
_born_ of him.” “Let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is
righteous, even as he is righteous.”[28]

There is still another way of bringing into comparison the spirit of
Christ and the character of that Christianity which assumes to itself to
be the only fruit of his spirit. We can compare the existing state of
the Christian world with the expectations of Jesus, with that state of
things to which he looked forward as the Reign of his spirit, the
Kingdom of the true Gospel upon earth. If the Christianity that prevails
has not realized the expectations of Christ, then its practical tendency
is evidently not in the direction of the true Gospel; it is, to the
extent of the failure, a departure from the power and character of the
original spirit. Christ could not be mistaken about the proper
operations of his own spirit; and the system whose operations do not
fulfil his promises cannot contain a full and perfect ministration of
his spirit. And this argument will amount to something like a
demonstration, if we can show, first, that this system which has failed
to realize the expectations of Jesus as to the condition of his Church,
has, for large tracts both of time and space, been the prevailing
influence of the Christian world, with nothing to obstruct it, so that
it has had full and free scope to work its own works, and to manifest
its own spirit; and secondly, if we can point to _the something_ in that
system, which manifestly has caused it to be destructive of those hopes,
and to work counter to this expectation of Christ.

There is no sublimer idea of Christianity than its delightful vision of
a UNIVERSAL CHURCH; the kingdom of the Gospel becoming a kingdom of
Heaven on earth; uniting the nations by a spiritual bond; in every heart
among the families of men kindling the same solemn ideas, and opening
the same living springs; subduing the differences of class and country
by the affinities of worship, by kindred images of Hope, of Duty, and of
God, becoming a meeting place for the thoughts of men; including every
form and variety of mind within that spiritual faith which leads onwards
to the infinite, yet presents distinct ideas to the heart of childhood,
and feeds the sources of an infant’s prayer; assembling in their
countless homes the Brotherhood of man around the spiritual altar of one
Father and one God, whose presence is a Temple wherein all are gathered,
and whose Spirit, dwelling in each heart, meets and returns the seekings
of all his children.

Such was the Christian vision of the CHURCH UNIVERSAL, of the union of
all good men in the worship of one God under the leadership of his
Image, growing up into him in all things, which is the head, even
Christ.

Such was the sublime idea that filled the mind of Jesus when he looked
forward in heavenly faith to the reign of his spirit, the kingdom of his
Gospel in the world. “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold;
them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be
one fold and one shepherd.”[29] “Neither pray I for these alone, but for
them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all
may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; that they also
may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
Such also was the magnificent and healing view that filled the hearts of
the Apostles when they protested against burdens being laid upon
Christ’s freemen; rebuked the first manifestations of a sectarian
Christianity; and would acknowledge no distinctions between those who
were walking in the steps of the same master, and moulding their souls
into the same similitude of Christ. “There is one body, and one spirit,
even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through
all, and in you all. But unto every one is given grace, according to the
measure of the gift of Christ. Till we all come in the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: from whom the whole
body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint
supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every
part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in
love.”[30] “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. And
there are differences of administration, but the same Lord. And there
are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all
in all.” “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the
members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.
For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews
or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink
into one spirit.” “That there should be no schism in the body; but that
the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one
member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be
honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ
and members in particular.”[31]

Such is the Christian and Apostolic view of the Church of Christ on
earth. Turn we now to the actual Church. Is it a realization of this
divine image of the mind of Jesus? Is there in it a unity of spirit in
the bond of peace? Do the branches abide in the Vine? Do the scattered
and warring members make one spirit in one body? Alas! could there be a
sadder mockery, than to pretend to seek in our prevalent Christianity
any features corresponding to this divine conception?

Trinitarian Christianity is founded upon a principle directly opposed to
the realization of this prospect and vision of Jesus. It declares that
there shall be no unity but a doctrinal unity. It rejects that moral and
spiritual union which is the bond of peace, and which, as subsisting
among his followers, Christ looked forward to as the great proof to the
world that God had sent him;—and it declares that there shall be no
bonds but the bonds of Creeds. It breaks up the Christian world into
distinct and mutually repulsive parties; each claiming—not to be
disciples of the life of Christ—not to be one with him as he was one
with God, in will, aspiration, and purpose of soul, but—to be in
possession of the exact doctrinal ideas which constitute a saving faith,
of a certain intellectual process of belief, through which alone God
conducts the sinner into Heaven, and without which no soul, whatever may
be its spiritual oneness with Jesus and his Father, can be saved. Now it
is clear that a system such as this, requiring not a unity of spirit,
but a unity of opinion, cannot be that primitive Gospel, which,
according to the expectation of the Saviour, was to gather all the
believers under Heaven into a universal Church. Trinitarianism, as a
system, does not, and cannot, work out these fruits of the spirit of
Christ. It does not gather, but scatters; it does not collect into one;
but disunites, severs, and casts out. It disowns all harmony but the
harmony of metaphysical conceptions. It has no wider way of salvation,
no broader bond of peace, no more open road to Heaven, than a
coincidence of ideas, on the essence of the Deity, the mysterious modes
of the divine existence; a person in whom there are two natures; and
then, again, a nature in which there are three persons; and this as
preparatory to a moral process, in which a penalty is paid by
substitution for a guilt incurred by substitution. I ask not now whether
these ideas are true; whether they are realities of God’s mind; but I
ask, Have they ever been, or can they ever be, bonds of union for a
Church Universal? Are these the grand affinities towards which all
hearts shall be drawn; and which, breaking down our minor distinctions
into less than nothing, shall bind together the families of man in the
fellowship of one spirit? You all know, every man knows, that a
uniformity of opinion is an impossibility; that God has nowhere provided
the means for producing it; that nowhere does it exist; no—not in that
closely-fenced and strictly-articled Church, whose bosom at this very
hour is rent by heresies, even as, throughout all her history, they
shattered the unity and split the bosom even of infallible Rome; and
seeing, therefore, that there is no such doctrinal unity on earth, if
Jesus understood his own gospel, this cannot be the oneness with his
Father and himself, to which he looked forward as the Reign of his
Spirit in the world. And yet the Trinitarian Church of England, one of
whose Ministers when, on a late occasion, denouncing Unitarian heresies,
took the opportunity to give the relief of expression to his horror of
other heresies in the bosom of his own communion, and openly denounced
as heretics ordained clergymen and dignitaries of his own Church,—this
Church of England, notwithstanding all this, still claims to be the
great bulwark, among Protestants, of the unity of the Faith, the
dignified rebuker of schisms and sects; and still offers to the harassed
and distracted, to the rent and divided body of Christ, a creed—and what
a creed!—as the only bond of agreement and of peace.

Either, then, Christ miscalculated the workings of his own spirit, when
he contemplated a Universal Church as its natural fruit; or
Trinitarianism, when it destroys the spiritual union of the Church, a
moral oneness with Jesus and with his Father, by its demand for a
doctrinal conformity, is, to the extent of this operation, an
Antichrist, a departure from the healing and uniting spirit of the true
Gospel. Let me, for the sake of distinctness, put you in possession of
the exact difference between the fundamental principles of Unitarian and
Trinitarian Christianity. To a Unitarian the essentials of Christianity
are; that a man takes into his heart the moral image of Jesus, and loves
it supremely, and trusts it absolutely as his example of perfection, and
his leader up to God. If I was asked to define a Christian, I would say
that he was one who took Jesus Christ as he is presented in the gospels,
as his best idea of Duty, and his best programme of Heaven; the very
ideal of the religious spirit and life; the perfect image of God; and
the perfect model for man. These are a Unitarian’s essentials of
Christianity. To a Trinitarian the essentials of a Christian are these:
not that he receive Jesus as his image of God, his model of Duty, and
his type of Heaven,—but that he receive a certain metaphysical Creed,
certain doctrinal ideas, which “except he keep whole and undefiled,
without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” Now, a union of all
_hearts_, under the leadership of one Christ, and in the love and
reverence of one moral Spirit, is a possible thing; but a union of all
_minds_ in the reception of certain metaphysical ideas which the minds
of Milton, of Newton, and of Locke, could not find, either in Reason or
in Scripture, is not a possible thing: and therefore my first assertion
of the “practical importance” of the Unitarian Controversy is to this
effect:—that Trinitarianism, by its fundamental principle of a doctrinal
conformity, a principle not known to the true gospel, is the originating
cause of all religious disunion and strife; the creator of all schisms,
sects, and heresies; the great and effectual antagonist of any
realization of that sublimest and most heavenly conception of the
Saviour—a Universal Church, cherishing the same Hopes, studying the same
Models, trusting to the same Image of God to guide us to His presence,—a
union of all hearts, seeking to be one, even as God and Christ were one,
in the fellowship of the same spirit. This is my heaviest indictment
against the practice of Trinitarianism, that it destroys Christ’s
delightful image of his Spirit’s Reign on earth, and creates in its
place—what shall I say?—the strife and disunion, the fears of the weak
and the arrogance of the coarse; the wranglings of creeds and the
absence of love; the heat of controversy and the chill of religion,
through the midst of which we are now passing.[32]

Trinitarianism has long been the prevailing influence of the Christian
world; it holds all the religious power of these countries in its own
hands; there is nothing external to prevent its carrying into existence
its own ideas; and if in the day of its power it has not wrought the
works and realized the hopes of Christ, it must be because it has worked
in another spirit, and preached another gospel; adding to the primitive
“glad tidings” of “repentance and remission of sins,” other conditions
which are not glad tidings, and which are not Christ’s. Now not only can
we point to the actual failure in proof of the absence of the true
spirit, _but we can lay our finger upon the element of mischief_, and
demonstrate it to be the parent of the evils we deplore, the frustrator
of the hope of Christ. Trinitarianism, by demanding a doctrinal
assimilation, an intellectual instead of a spiritual union, and
wielding, as it does, the prevailing influences of religion, has, in the
day of its power, forcibly prevented the formation of that universal
Church which Christ contemplated. And until it drops from its essentials
the doctrinal oneness, and substitutes in its place a spiritual oneness
derived from obedience to God as he is manifested in Jesus, it cannot
gather into one fold, and constitute the kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

Now let us suppose, for a moment, that this doctrinal conformity is
required by Christianity, and that not TRUST in Christ, but belief of
Creeds, constitutes acceptance of the gospel. Then comes the question,
and a most perplexing one it would be, how can any one be sure that the
creed he trusts to contains exactly the ideas to which God has annexed
safety? Supposing creeds to be the essentials of Christianity, then how
can any Christian be sure that he has got the true creed? I can easily
conceive with what fear, with what apprehensions of mind, with what a
paralyzed intellect, and unconfiding heart, sinking the love of truth in
selfish terrors, a man trembling under the conviction that his
everlasting safety depended upon his reception of a doctrine, would come
to the examination of the Scriptures; I can well conceive how his
judgment would be gradually bereft of all calm and trustful
independence; how his fears and passions would slavishly draw him over
to whatever party predominated in intolerance, and in the confidence of
their assumptions, frightening him into the belief that safety was with
_them_, for that if creeds were the essentials of salvation, the more of
creed the more of certainty;—but after all this sacrifice has been
submitted to, after terror has wrought its work, and the intellect has
surrendered to the passions—after the man in the pursuit of selfish
safety has given up his Reason and his free mind, and stooped his neck
to the yoke,—I cannot see how in any way he has altered or bettered his
position; I cannot see how he has attained the end for which he has paid
such degrading wages; how he can be certain that he has got the creed
which ensures salvation;—and after having sold his birthright, parted
with his free soul for the sake of a safety built upon doctrines, he
discovers at last, _unless he is a Roman Catholic_, that he has no
absolute certainty of these doctrines being the true ones; he is still
left in doubt whether after all he is in possession of the particular
creed that works salvation—whether, after all, he has not bowed down his
soul for nothing. If God requires from men certain doctrinal convictions
as necessary to salvation, then how can any man be sure that he has got
the true convictions? Even the verbal and plenary inspiration of the
Bible, if we believed in it, which we do not, would not relieve a
Protestant Trinitarian of this difficulty: for those who agree in
believing the Bible in every word inspired, can draw from it very
different meanings, as none have reason to know better than the divines
of the English Church.

I am tempted to give a few specimens of the differences between existing
divines of the Church of England on the very points of accusation
against Unitarianism. You are aware of the place that the Atonement
holds in Evangelical preaching. Listen then to the new party in the
Church, the leaders of which are, one of them, the Oxford Professor of
Hebrew and a Canon of Christ Church, and the others distinguished both
in the Church and in the University. These are their words:—“We now
proceed to the consideration of a subject most important in this point
of view,—the prevailing notion of bringing forward the Atonement
explicitly and prominently on all occasions. It is evidently quite
opposed to what we consider the teaching of Scripture, nor do we find
any sanction for it in the gospels. _If_ the Epistles of St. Paul
_appear_ to favour it, it is only at first sight.”[33] Again, you are
aware of the importance attached to the doctrine of Justification by
Faith, that test, as it is described, of a rising or a falling church.
Listen then once more to one of the heads of the Oxford party:—“The
instrument of our righteousness, I would maintain, is _holy baptism_.
_Our Church_ considers it to be the _Sacrament of Baptism_; _they_ (the
Reformers) consider it to be _Faith_. ***Christians are justified by the
communication of an inward, most sacred, and most mysterious gift. From
the very time of baptism they are temples of the Holy Ghost.*** Faith,
then, being the appointed representative of baptism, derives its
authority and virtue from that which it represents. It is justifying
_because of baptism_; it is the faith of the baptized, of the
regenerate, of the justified. Faith does not precede justification; but
justification precedes faith, and makes it justifying.”[34] I must quote
one other sentiment of this Oxford section of the English Protestant
Church, respecting the MASS:—“At the time of the Reformation, we, in
common with all the West, possessed the rite of the Roman Church, or St.
Peter’s Liturgy. This _sacred_, and _most precious_ monument, then of
the Apostles, our reformers received whole and entire from their
predecessors, and _they mutilated the tradition_ of 1500 years.”[35] Now
it only bears out my argument that this movement of Trinitarianism is in
the direction of Popery.

Such being the doctrinal uniformity of the Church of England, where then
is the infallible authority that is to put me in possession of those
doctrinal ideas, that absolute truth, without which I cannot be saved?
Having got an inspired Bible, I still want an inspired Interpreter, who,
out of all the possible meanings that the words will bear, will set
aside all the wrong ones, and select that one interpretation which, in
the shape of doctrine, God has made the source of safety. Where is this
Interpreter to be found? Where am I to look for this infallible
authority, which is to explain to me the exact sense of the Bible,
without which I cannot be saved, and to acquaint me with the very ideas
of God? Is it the Church of England that is to do me this important
service; to be my infallible guide through the possible meanings of
words; and to present me with the one creed that will operate as a charm
for my salvation? Oh no! for the Church is Protestant, and recognizes
the sufficiency of Scripture, and the right of free inquiry, and rails
at the Pope because he denies these things. But still I ask, if I cannot
be saved without this doctrinal truth, where am I to find it, and how
can I feel certain that I have it? A Roman Catholic would relieve me of
my difficulties. He would treat me more kindly, and with an ampler
provision for my security, than do the divines of the English Church.
They tell me that my salvation depends upon my having the true creed,
and then they leave me in the dark, without any means of ascertaining
what the true creed is, and whether I have it or not. The Roman
Catholics, on the other hand, seeing that exact truth is necessary, take
care to provide for me an infallible Judge of truth. They are merciful
in the accuracy of their provisions for relieving my fears, when
compared with the worse than Egyptian inconsistency, the contradictory
tyranny of my Protestant taskmasters. The Egyptians asked for bricks,
and provided no straw. The Church of England asks for absolute Truth,
and provides no judge of Truth. And this it does in the face of the fact
that, not even to its own clergymen is the inspired Bible a source of
certainty: that three distinctly marked divisions now constitute the
Unity of the Church, and dwell, not peaceably, together.

To any man, then, who believes that doctrinal convictions are the
essentials of Christianity, there is no escape from Popery. Out of
Popery, there is no Church that professes to have interpreted Scripture
with infallible certainty. If I am to be saved by a true creed, show me
the divinely appointed tribunal, and let me bow down before it. But do
not tell me, unless you are a Roman Catholic, that I must be saved by
Truth, and that your Truth is the one to which I must bow down my soul,
or perish everlastingly. One man’s Truth is as good as another man’s
Truth, unless there is a divinely appointed tribunal to judge between
them.[36] Where is this tribunal? I know it is supposed to be in the
Roman Catholic Church; and I know that the English Church, if it
possessed such a tribunal, could not speak with a whit more confidence
than it does. I enter it then as my second indictment against the
practice of Trinitarianism, that by building the Church of Christ upon
the foundation of a doctrinal uniformity, it is an ally of Popery; that
if it was consistent with itself, it would be Popish altogether; and
that this is not a mere tendency but actually taking effect, is
manifested in that Church which is most open to the temptations of
spiritual ambition, by its gradual and lately accelerating movements in
the direction of Roman Catholicism. I know that the Evangelicals
denounce the Oxford modification of Popery, but they are both of one
spirit, and neither will find their natural issues until they fall into
the arms of the infallible Church, and leave whatever Protestantism
still remains in the land, unencumbered by their presence.

Listen to some of the Clergymen of the Church of England, and tell me,
can you distinguish their tones from the tones of Popery? I have lately
done so. I heard this language, I mean language to this effect:
“Unitarians think our pity insulting, because they are not conscious of
requiring of it: but when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, was his pity an
insult to those who had no sympathy with the sources of his tears?” So
that we are left to infer, first, that he who uses this language knows
our need as fully as Jesus did, when amid the brief acclaim of his
followers, he forgot the momentary triumph, and his sympathy gushed out
in tears wept over the doomed city—and, secondly, that the speculative
errors of Unitarians, supposing them to be such, require tears of the
same description as did the crimes of Jerusalem. Did Jesus ever weep for
errors of opinion; over Samaritan heresies for instance? “Ye know not
what manner of spirit ye are of. The Son of Man is not come to destroy
men’s lives; but to save them.”

Again I heard, in substance, this language, and could not distinguish it
from Popery. “Christianity must have its essentials; these to us are the
Deity of Christ; the corruption of human nature; and the remedy of a
vicarious sacrifice. The Unitarians who deny these points we therefore
do not hold to be Christians, and not believing them to be so, we
plainly tell them so.” And accordingly they treat us as if we were not.
Now I acknowledge that this is entirely consistent upon their part. They
make the essentials of Christianity to consist in doctrinal ideas, and
consequently, whether they choose it or not, and almost without knowing
it, they are forced to assume the tones of Popish Infallibility, and to
decide authoritatively, by their metaphysical standard, who are
Christians and who are not. I am quite aware that this is not
intentional arrogance on their part, but a necessity in which their
first principles involve them. They cannot begin with a Salvation
through creeds, without ending in Popery; and of all the forms of
Popery, that which professes Protestantism, is the most offensive.

It was a fresh proof to me of the authoritative character which
Trinitarianism by necessity assumes, when I heard naturally and
unconsciously the same kind of doctrinal compactness ascribed to
ourselves, as if a church could not exist without a fixed creed; and
quotations from all sorts of minds brought forward, without a suspicion,
but they were all received among us as recognized standards of opinion.
There were Arians and Humanitarians, Necessarians and Libertarians, and
one foreign writer, who, as I am informed, was no Christian at all—and
all these were appealed to as standards of Unitarianism. Now we
certainly glory in it that our religion does not destroy our
individuality; that in consistency with the great principle of Christ
being our Leader, we tolerate freely intellectual differences, and
encourage the virtues of free thought and speech; but it is a little
unfortunate, and a little unfair, if the fundamental principles of
Unitarian Theology and Religion are to be answerable, with their life,
for all the sayings of all the Unitarians from Marcion and the Ebionites
down to the present day. Take one form of Unitarianism as it is
represented by Priestley; or take another and better form of it as it is
represented by Channing; but do not confuse in one two minds so
radically different, and call a combination which never had existence,
the Unitarian Faith. It was owing to this Popish idea that all Religions
must have a doctrinal compactness, that I heard a sentiment of
Priestley’s, which I entirely disown, imputing idolatry to Trinitarians,
ascribed to all Unitarians. If Unitarians worshipped Christ not
believing him to be God _they_ would be idolaters: but Trinitarians
worshipping one God in three persons, and still believing him to be one,
are as certainly not Polytheists. Again I heard the Improved Version
stated to be the Unitarian Bible: and that the Unitarians not finding
their favourite doctrines in the actual Bible made a Bible for
themselves. Now let it be known that this new Bible is simply an English
Version of the New Testament having for its basis or model a translation
made by an Archbishop of the United Church of England and Ireland, a
circumstance which we were not told; that it is founded upon the
translation of Archbishop Newcome; that it is not used in Unitarian
worship and possesses no authority amongst us except such as it may
derive from its just merits, which are not generally rated by us as very
high: and lastly, that no one is answerable for it except its
editors,[37] and not even they any longer than they choose. And yet, one
would suppose, that the Church of England divines might be sufficiently
conversant with varieties of opinion, even in a church more strictly
bound than ours, and ought not to fall into the error of taking any book
whatever, or any man whatever, as the standards of a faith. With all our
differences I am not aware that our bond of union covers wider varieties
of opinion on the great questions of Theology and Criticism, than those
which separate Bishop Marsh, Bishop Butler of Durham, Archdeacon Paley,
to say nothing of the older and nobler school of Sherlock and
Barrow,[38] Tillotson and Taylor, from the modern Evangelical Divines;
and both from the Oxford approach to Popery, a late movement in the
direction which we have now endeavoured to show is the destined path of
Creeds.

But I shall be asked, has Christianity no essentials, and may a man
believe anything he likes, and yet be a Christian? I answer that the
essential belief of a Christian is the belief that Jesus Christ is the
moral image of God; that to be one with him is to be one with his Father
and become fitted for that Heaven in harmony with which his mind was
made; and that any doctrinal ideas which a man can hold in consistency
with this act of spiritual allegiance, he may hold, and yet be a
Christian.

And yet we do not hold that all doctrines are indifferent, for we think
that some are nearer than others to the great realities of God; that
some, more than others, are in harmony with the mind of Christ; that
some more than others give us solemn and inspiring views of the infinite
Spirit; worthy conceptions of the mission and offices of Jesus, and
elevating sympathies with his character; sublime and true ideas of Duty;
peaceful yet awful convictions of the retributions of God; and therefore
are more effectual to build us up in the oneness with his Father and
with himself, which is the sublimest aim of Christ. Other views may
operate powerfully on those who hold them; but as long as they do not
accord with our best ideas of perfection, with our noblest views of the
character of Jesus and of God, they cannot confer upon _us_ that
salvation which we take to be the essence of the Gospel, assimilation to
the infinite Spirit as we know him through his Image, perfect Trust in
our heavenly Father, as he is manifested in Christ.

I warn you against an imposture that is practised upon you, not
knowingly but ignorantly, in the use that is made of such expressions
as, “salvation by faith and not by works,” and St. Paul’s anathema on
those who preached another gospel, which he declared was not another
_gospel_, that is, that it did not contain “_glad tidings_,” and was
therefore no gospel at all. Now salvation by “faith” does not mean
salvation by doctrines, but by TRUST in Jesus Christ as our spiritual
Master, God’s representative to man; and exemption from “works” does not
mean exemption from moral excellence, but exemption from all the works
and conditions of the Jewish Law, from which, with all the bondage of
its sacrifices, services and exactions, the Gospel, as offered by
Christ, was the glad tidings of deliverance. It is on this account that
St. Paul denounces any man who preaches another gospel, that is, who
adds to it unspiritual conditions which would bring men again under the
yoke of the Law, and change the glad tidings of Liberty into the burdens
of a woeful superstition. “Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be
circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.” To go back to the bondage
of the law, is to make the spiritual liberty of Christ’s freemen of no
avail. Now the scriptural knowledge that is necessary for these
explanations is of the scantiest measure; that Faith means moral Trust,
spiritual acceptance and confidence; that works frequently mean, when
used by Paul, not Christian holiness but Jewish Ceremonies; and that the
Gospel means not a scheme of doctrines but the glad Message of
deliverance from every yoke of bondage: and yet the false meanings that
lurk under these words, are again and again thrust forward as Scripture
evidence for doctrines entirely alien to their spirit. Elsewhere, would
the anathema of the noble-minded Apostle be ready to descend upon all
other additions as well as Jewish ones, to Christ’s gospel of spiritual
liberty?[39]

I have contrasted the fundamental principles of Trinitarian and
Unitarian Christianity, and, without entering into their peculiar
tenets, I have shown that the practical tendency of Trinitarianism is to
disunite the Church of Christ; to lead to Popery as the only known
provision for doctrinal certainty; and to preach “another gospel,”
which, to us at least, is no gospel at all, and has defaced the grace
and glory of the original message. I have now to proceed to the
particular views in which these principles respectively issue when
applied to the examination of the Scriptures, and to contrast the
practical tendencies of the distinguishing doctrines of Unitarian and
Trinitarian Christianity. The Unitarians think that Trinitarianism, with
all its dependent ideas, is not a system which the Scriptures would of
their own accord naturally suggest to a free mind, examining them
without prejudice or fear, in a spirit of confidingness in God and in
truth; and that its peculiar set of notions are chiefly arrived at by
inferences drawn from the Scriptures in the spirit of preconceived
theories, and under the intimidation of priest-taught fears. We
recognize nothing but the priestly spirit in all those systems whose cry
is, “unless you believe this and unless you believe that, you cannot be
saved;” and acknowledging no salvation but that of a spirit morally one
with God and with his Christ, salvation from superstition, and salvation
from sin, and salvation from unconfiding fears; and believing that all
truth is one and from God, we confidently appeal, in confirmation of our
scriptural soundness, to that great and independent test of Truth which
is furnished by the moral tendencies of doctrines. I shall aim to show
that Unitarianism has more power both with the understanding and the
heart; that the Intellect which Trinitarianism has no resource but to
disparage, and the Reason at which I lately heard, doubtless not without
good reasons, such melancholy scoffs (for what can be more melancholy
than to hear a man scoffing at Reason, and attempting to _reason_ men
into a contempt for Reason?), that this Reason, our ray of the divine
mind, _we_ enlist on the side of our religion and of our souls;—that the
spiritual nature which Trinitarianism insults and scorns we contemplate
with trembling reverence as made for holiness and for God;—and that the
personal holiness and love, the Christ-like spirit and the Christ-like
life to which Trinitarianism assigns a secondary place, and in
disparagement of which it can stumble, as happened on a late occasion,
on a condemnation of the Scripture law, that every man shall be judged
according to his works[40]—this holy living and dying _we_ set forth as
the very salvation of the sons of God, the very way of spiritual safety
trodden by the Forerunner and the Saviour, even Christ the righteous.

I desire to be understood to affirm nothing about the actual characters
of those who hold views which I think unfriendly to the soul. The
tendencies of opinions may be counteracted: but still wherever there is
error, that is, wherever there is anything not conformed to the mind of
God, _there_ there is, to the extent of its agency, a principle of evil,
or at least of misdirection, at the fountain of our life, though there
may also be sweetening influences which are strong enough to neutralize
its power. Trinitarianism does not produce all its natural fruits,
though it produces some that are sufficiently deplorable, because it is
kept in check by the better principles of our nature, with which it is
not in alliance. It is vain to pretend that a man’s belief has no
influence upon his life and upon his soul. The belief of a man is that
which animates his sentiments, and peoples his imagination, and provides
objects for his heart;—and if he bears no impress of it upon his
character, it is only because it forms no real part of his spiritual
existence, it is not written upon the living tablets of the mind.
Believing then that our views of Truth, when they become a part of our
living thoughts, woven into the spiritual frame and the daily food of
the mind, _do_ exercise a controlling influence over the whole being, it
is our ardent desire to discover those views of the Gospel which put
forth most mightily this power over the heart, and we openly confess,
that it is because we believe it possesses an unrivalled efficacy to
save the soul, by bringing it into a holy and trustful union with God
and Christ, that we value unspeakably, and adhere to through all
temptation and scorn, the faith that is in us. To us it is the light, as
it is the gift of God, and we will not abandon it, so long as it points
Conscience to the things that are before; leads us up to God through the
love and imitation of his Christ; speaks with heavenly serenity of grand
and tranquillizing truths in moments of trial: and true to our spiritual
connections with Heaven, suffers our sins to have no peace, and our
virtues no fears.

I shall endeavour, briefly but distinctly, to bring out the prominent
points of difference between Unitarian and Trinitarian Christianity, in
their moral aspects.

And, first, Unitarianism alone puts forth the great view that the moral
and spiritual character of the mind itself is its own recompense, its
own glory, its own heaven; and that this harmony with God and with his
Christ is not the means of salvation only, but salvation itself.
Unitarianism alone receives the spiritual view of Christ that the
kingdom of Heaven is within us; and works not for outward wages, but to
make the inward soul a holy temple for the Spirit of God; that through
its purified affections Jesus, our best type of Heaven, may shed his own
peace, and that he and his Father may be able to love us, and come unto
us, and make their abode with us. Now you are aware that this qualifying
of ourselves for Heaven through heavenly frames of mind, is so prominent
a part of our faith, that it is actually converted into a charge against
us. I heard the Unitarians charged with a want of gospel humility for
regarding holy affections and a Christ-like life as the substance of the
hope of Heaven; and I thought on the words of the Apostle—“The kingdom
of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.”[41]
This is not the salvation so loudly vaunted by Trinitarianism. It
assigns another office to Christ than that of leading men to God through
a resemblance to himself. Jesus stands to Trinitarians not principally
as the Inspirer of virtue, the quickener of holiest affections, the
guide of the heaven-bound spirit; but as bearing on his own person the
punishment due to their sins, and as performing in his own person the
righteousness that is imputed to them, and being transferred, by an act
of faith, makes good their claim to Heaven. Now these notions of Heaven
regard it as so much property, which one person may purchase and
transfer to another. Christ, by an act of self-sacrifice, becomes the
purchaser of Heaven, and gives a right of settlement in the blessed land
to every one who consents to regard his death as a substitution for his
own punishment, and his righteousness as a substitution for his own
virtues. There is no flattering unction that could be laid to the soul,
no drug to stupefy its life, that could more thoroughly turn it away
from the spiritual purposes of Jesus.[42] He lived that men might know
their own nature, and work out its glory for themselves. He lived that
he might rescue that nature from low views of its duties and its powers,
by showing humanity in the image of God. He bore his cross that men
might look to Calvary and behold the moral heroism of the meekest heart
when it trusts in God; with what serenity a filial faith can pass
through the vicissitudes of severest trial, and take the cup from the
hand of a Father, though he presents it from out the darkest cloud of
his providence. He died, because Death crossed his path of Duty, and not
to turn aside was part of his loyalty to the Spirit of Truth, “for this
cause was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I
should bear witness unto the truth;”—he died that earth and heaven might
unite their influences on the human soul treading an uninterrupted path
to God, that its light might come from beyond the grave, and its hope
from the peace of a world that is never troubled; and yet, alas! for the
perversion—men are found to stand beneath the cross, and so far to
mistake the spirit of the celestial sufferer, as to appropriate, to
transfer to themselves, by an act of faith, its moral character, and to
call themselves the redeemed of Christ. Surely there is a “practical
importance” in the Unitarian controversy, if it warns men against these
notions of substitution, these unspiritual views of Heaven and Christ.
The worst of all delusions is that which turns us away from inward
holiness, inward qualifications for Heaven, and holds out to our too
ready grasp some foreign, some adventitious, and extrinsic hope. It is
right that we should rely on God, for his strength is our strength, and
his mercy _our_ supporting hope; it is right that we should love and
look unto Jesus, for his influences are our spiritual wealth, and his
path our bright and beaming way;—but where in Heaven or earth are we to
rest at last, but in what God and Christ do for us, in the formed
character of our own souls?

And now shall I be told, that this is claiming Heaven on the ground of
our own merits? And how often shall we have to repel that false
accusation? If by this is meant, that we deem our virtues to be
_deserving_ of Heaven, the charge of insanity might as well be laid
against us, as that infinite presumption; but if it is meant that, to a
holy spirit, and to a holy life, to a supreme love for the Right, the
True, the Good, _and to these alone_, God, with a love that is infinite,
has attached something of the blessedness of his own nature;—then we do
hold this as the first and brightest of Truths, the very substance of
the Gospel, the sublimest lesson of the Saviour’s life, shadowed by his
death, only to be authenticated and glorified by his resurrection and
ascension. I know of nothing so deeply sad as to witness the ministers
of Christ appealing for support to the lowest parts of human nature—the
fishers of men casting out their nets, that they may take into the drag
the most selfish passions and fears—bribing over to their side the
terrors and the weaknesses, to which, except through penitence and
restoration, Unitarian Christianity dare not offer peace. Trinitarianism
will not deal so justly and so strictly with sin. We are speaking of its
tendencies; not of the forms it sometimes, nay we will say often,
assumes in the higher and purer order of minds. It is true to the
weaknesses of men; but false to their strength. It seems to many to save
them _in_ their low condition, not _from_ it. It will not meet the soul,
and tell it that there is no substitute for holiness, and that to move
guilt from its punishment would be to move God from his throne. It takes
that guilty soul, and instead of dealing with it truly, cleansing from
sin, and pouring in the spirit of the life of Christ, leans it against
the Atoning Sacrifice, and the Righteousness that cometh by imputation,
an unhallowed and unnatural alliance, to make that glorious virtue an
easy retreat for guilt, and the holy Jesus a “Minister of Sin.”[43]
“They have healed the hurt of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace,
where there is no peace.”[44]

And if we value Unitarianism for what we feel to be the efficacy of its
views in regard to the offices of Christ, we value it even more, for its
views of God, and for the connections it gives us with his spirit. Piety
is the noblest distinction, the richest happiness, the purest fountain
of the soul; and we love, without measure, the faith that nurtures it
most strongly. We feel our affections to be drawn towards one God and
Father with a singleness and intensity, that we believe would be
impossible, if the heart was to be distributed among three objects, or
distracted by a confused conception of a tripersonal God. We boast an
undivided worship, and an undivided Temple, where all the soul’s
devotion centres upon one Father. His spirit was with us when we knew
not the power that was exciting our irrepressible joy; and though He has
led us through his ways of discipline, we knew it was the same hand that
had guided our early steps; He has met our souls when they were abroad
through Nature, and touched them with his breathing Spirit; He has
pursued us into our solitudes, and, in our more solemn moments of
penitence and suffering, He has made us to see light in darkness, mercy
in trial, and to drink of the deepest fountains of life; His compassion
has mercifully cooled the burning shame of our guiltiest confessions,
and saved us through fear and weakness by heavenly hope; His peace has
descended upon all our aspirations, and shielded their feebleness from
blight and death;—and, throughout this varied experience, there was but
one voice speaking to the heart; the pressure of one hand on the pulses
of life; one God revealing himself to the spirits of his children.
Whatever is delightful in the Universe, whatever is pure in earthly joy,
whatever is touching in Jesus, whatever is profoundly peaceful in a holy
spirit, are to us the splendours of one God, the gifts of one Father;
bonds upon the heart, uniting it to one spiritual and everlasting
Friend. We do not profess that our Piety has glowed with the intensity
of these mingling fires, but we feel that there is a power of motive
drawing us to the love of one God, which no other Theology may lay claim
to.

But the “practical importance” of our views of God consists not merely
in that Unity of being, through which all the devotion of the soul is
poured into one central affection; it affects also the unity of his
Character, the moral perfections of the source of Piety. We reject that
faith which represents the moral government of God as a system of
favouritism. We meet with nothing in nature to impeach the Impartiality
of our Heavenly Father. We believe that the same God who sends his sun
and his rain upon the evil and upon the just, is willing to shed the dew
of his blessing upon the hearts of all his children. We rejoice to
overlook the vain and perishable distinctions of time; to believe that
all the human family, partakers of one spirit, meet in the love of the
universal Father; that God in heaven is no respecter of persons; and
that the humblest and most neglected of his children may rise into
hallowed intercourse with the infinite spirit. We protest with a strong
abhorrence against the dreadful views which are given of God’s inability
to forgive, of the Justice of the Father horribly satisfied by the
substitution of the innocent for the sins of the guilty. We profess to
have no hope either in time or in eternity, but in the unclouded
goodness of Him who sitteth on Heaven’s throne and reigneth overall—and
if these things may be, and yet God be good, it is a goodness we do not
understand and cannot calculate upon, and the pillars of our faith are
shaken in all the reliances of futurity. We do not enter now into the
scriptural evidence for or against these doctrines—that will be done in
other parts of this course; our present concern is with the question,
which of these views is the most calculated to nourish piety, to kindle
within us a warm, unselfish, and intelligible love of God. We meet in
the world the children of one Parent, with the same souls, the same
hopes, the same capacities for joy; with the same God to comfort their
sorrows and to guard their happiness; breathing on them the same holy
and inspiring influences; leading them to the same Saviour, and
beckoning them to the same Heaven; and our love for God and our
fellowship with man thus mingle intimately in the same heart and shed
through it the serene and blissful light of a full, radiant, and
unclouded Piety. The spiritual influences of Unitarianism thus lead to a
supreme love and veneration for God by exhibiting the Holiness, the
Forgivingness, and the all-embracing Impartiality of the Divine
Character, without a stain upon their brightness and their purity.

We believe that there is in the spirit of these views a peculiar power
to excite an interest in the souls of our brethren; to give an expansive
spirit of humanity; to make us feel that we are bound by the holiest of
ties; united in the purposes of one Father; children of the same God,
and educating for the same destinies. Wherever we cast our eyes they
fall upon God’s everlasting ones. In the humblest we see the future
immortal; and in the proudest we can see no more. We believe that God
made every living soul that it might become pure, virtuous and blessed;
we believe that his eye of watchful care is never removed from it; we
believe that He never abandons it, that He accompanies it in all its
wanderings, and that he will ultimately lead it by his own awful yet
merciful discipline, in this world or in the next, in safety to
Himself—and we dare not to scorn the spirit which God is tending and
which He purposes ultimately to save.

And with this belief at our hearts, we wonder that there is not more
heroism in the cause of the human soul; we wonder that the noblest of
all philanthropy, that which seeks the realization of Christian states
of character, is so rare among men; that there is so little of a strong
and yearning love drawing us towards sinning and suffering man; that
souls are permitted to slumber and die without an awakening voice; that
our hearts are not stirred within us when we look to the awful and
neglected wastes of human ignorance and sin, and reflect that through
each guilty bosom, and each polluted home there might breathe the purity
and the peace of Christ. We despair of none. We believe that the
guiltiest may be turned from their iniquities and saved. We believe that
God works by human means and expects our aid. We believe that the fire
of heaven is still smouldering, and that a spark might light it into
undying flame; and we are sure that the end of this faith is love
unwearied, which ought to assume more earnest forms of interest for our
nature, and to vent itself in purer efforts for its highest good. Others
may defend themselves by casting the whole burden upon God; may point in
despair to the hopeless condition of man’s heart; wait for fire from
heaven to come down and stir the sinner’s soul; and having thus “looked
upon” the moral sufferer may pass by upon the other side; but _with us_
there is but one duty; to go to him, to pour the spirit of Jesus into
his wounded heart, to lay upon ourselves his burdens, and to toil for
his restitution as a brother immortal. The “practical importance,” then,
of Unitarianism as contrasted with Trinitarianism is in this—that it
tends to penetrate our hearts with a deeper spirit of Christian love; to
give us hope and interest in our nature; to call out the highest efforts
of the spirit of humanity; and to supply us with lofty motive for
emulating the self-sacrifice of Jesus.

We think, further, that in our views of God, of Christ, and of human
nature, we have a peculiar encouragement for the personal virtues, a
peculiar demand for individual holiness. We have already alluded to the
force and distinctness with which we teach that the greatest work of
Christ is in giving inward power, strength of purpose to the soul; and
that there is no salvation except where the purity, the freedom, and the
love of Heaven are growing in the heaven-bound heart; but we also
recognize peculiar claims _upon us_ in the conviction which we hold so
sacred that our righteous Father has created us with a nature capable of
knowing and of doing His Will. Others may cast the odium of human sins
upon human inability, and thus at last throw down their burdens at the
door of their God; but as for _us_, we can only bow our heads in sorrow
and ask the forgiveness of Heaven. We believe that God has united us by
no necessity with sin; we deny altogether the incapacity of man to do
the will of God; we feel that there are energies within us which, if but
called out into the living strife, would overcome all the resistance of
temptation; we hear a deep voice issuing from the soul and witnessed to
by Christ, calling us to holiness and promising us peace;—and with God’s
seal thus set upon our nature, and God’s voice thus calling to the
kindred spirit within, why are we not found farther upon the path of
Christ, and brightening unto the perfect man?

For, alas! there is not only energy and holy motive in this lofty
conviction, there are also the elements of a true and deep humility. If
the glory of our souls is marred it is our own work. If the spirit of
God is quenched within us, we have ourselves extinguished it. If we have
gained but little advancement upon Heaven’s way, we have wasted and
misdirected immortal powers. Elevation of purpose, and true humility of
mind, the humility that looks upwards to Christ and God, and bows in
shame, are thus brought together in the Unitarian’s faith, as they are
by no other form of Christianity. I know it is said, with a strange
blindness, that this doctrine of the incapacity of man to know and to do
the will of God is rejected by Unitarianism because it rebukes our
pride; but no—it suffers man to be a sinner without hurting his pride;
it transfers the disgrace from the individual to the race; and that, on
the other hand, is the humbling picture which represents our sins not of
our inheritance but of our choice, the voluntary agent of evil degrading
a spirit made in the image of God, pouring the burning waters of
corruption into a frail though noble nature, until the crystal vessel is
stained and shattered. “Preach unto me smooth things, and prophesy
deceits,” is the demand of the less spiritual parts of man, and
Trinitarianism is certainly the Preacher whose views of sin fall softly
on enervated souls.

We cannot conclude without alluding, however generally, to the practical
importance of our views of the future life. We believe that the fitness
of the soul for Heaven, its oneness with God and Christ, will form the
measure of its joy; and that the thousand varieties of goodness will
each be consigned to its appropriate place in the allotments of
happiness. We believe that the glory of Heaven will brighten for ever as
the character is perfected under the influences of Heaven, and that to
this growing excellence there is no limit or end. We believe that even
in the future there is discipline for the soul; that even for the
guiltiest there may be processes of redemption; and that the stained
spirit may be cleansed as by fire. We believe that this view of a strict
and graduated retribution exerts a more quickening, personal, realizing
power than that of Eternal torments which no _heart_ believes, which no
man trembles to conceive; where the iniquity which is to be visited with
such an awful punishment becomes a _shifting line_ which every sinner
moves beyond himself; until Heaven itself is profaned, and all its
sacredness violated and encroached upon by those who feel that it would
be infinite injustice to plunge _them_ into an Eternity so unutterably
dreadful, but who have been taught to believe that to escape this Hell
is to be sure of Heaven.

Now our present objection to this doctrine of eternal punishment is the
practical one that it has no moral power. It does not come close enough
to truth and justice to take a hold upon the conscience, and so instead
of binding and constraining, it is inoperative and lax. The fact is, it
is not practically believed. It is too monstrous to be realized. Where,
we ask, are the fruits of this appalling doctrine, which is everywhere
preached? One would suppose that its dreadfulness would keep the tempted
spirit in constant alarm. I know that it occasions misery to the timid,
to the sensitive, to the feeble of nerve, that is just to those who
require the purer and gentler influences of religion to give them trust
in God: but what sinner has it alarmed? what guilty heart has it made
curdle with terror? what seared conscience has been scared from evil by
the shriek of woe coming up from the depths of the everlasting torture?
No; these are not the influences that convert sin. They are not believed
or realized, and yet they displace from the thoughts those definite
views of the future which would have power to move and save the soul.
The righteous allotments with which God will award the joys and sorrows
of the future; the character of the individual mind when it first
appears for judgment; the value of every moment of present time in
assigning us our first station in immortality; the exact righteousness
in which every variety of character shall have its graduated place on
the scale of recompense; the appalling thought of every separate spirit
standing before God just as the last effort of convulsed nature
dismissed it from the body;—the trifler in his levity, the drunkard with
his idiot look, the murderer with the blood-stains on his soul—and the
sainted spirit passing on the breath of prayer from the outer to the
inner Court of God’s presence;—these, the solemn distinctions of that
awful world, are all lost, because of that common Hell into whose abyss
unawed Conscience hurls her fears, and then forgets the infinite
gradations of punishment that still remain to pour dread recompense on
evil at the award of a retributive God.

There are some objections urged against these views of the practical
importance of Unitarianism to which I must now give brief and emphatic
answer.

1. It is said that Unitarianism generates no love to Christ: and the
reason assigned is, that as we reject the primal curse of original sin,
we have not so much to be forgiven, and consequently not equal
obligation to love; for to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth
little. Now in our view forgiveness is of God, in whom Trinitarians find
no forgiveness, and Christ is the image of our Father in Heaven, and we
love _him_ who leads us into that pure and blissful presence, and in
whose face we have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, full
of grace and truth. We love Jesus for what he is to our souls, and not
for the theological fiction, that he took off a disqualification which
our God laid on. We love all holy and good beings for the same reasons,
that they strengthen in our own nature the springs of goodness and
unselfish love, and lift us into fellowship with themselves; and
therefore we love God supremely, _and next to God_, _him_ who through
self-devotion and perfect filial trust preserved the moral lineaments of
Heaven, of a mind harmonized with providence, against the weaknesses and
through the temptations of this humanity, whose tremblings we know so
well, and whose fallings away in ourselves from the higher impulses of
God have taught us the love of veneration for him who made it bear the
likeness of Heaven, and, through its trials and its shrinkings, realized
perfection. The moral estimate that would proportion our love to Christ,
not to his own fitness to inspire love, to the heavenly benevolence that
breathed through his own life and death, but to the selfish measure of
the outward benefits received, can be equalled in the confusion and
impurity of its moral ideas only by another moral judgment pronounced
upon the same occasion—that the guilt of the Jews, when they crucified
Jesus, must be estimated and measured in proportion as Jesus was man or
God. This certainly is quite consistent with the Trinitarian scheme,
that guilt can be contracted unknowingly; but who will set right this
utter ignorance of the primitive ideas of morality? What spectres of the
thirteenth century rise before us when we listen to these conceptions—of
God dying under the hands of his creatures; and of their guilt, by some
process, (not moral, but metaphysical,) becoming infinite because the
sufferer was infinite, though they knew it not, and believed themselves
to be crucifying the man Jesus! It is only further proof that the
Atonement and its allied ideas tends to confuse in the minds that
receive it the fundamental perceptions of Right and Wrong.[45]

2. It is said that Unitarianism leads to infidelity: and the proof
assigned is that those whom Trinitarianism makes sceptics, find with us
ideas of Christ and Christianity with which they have sympathies. We
intercept the minds whom they have driven from Belief; we present our
serene and perfect image of Duty and of God to minds wearied and
perplexed with views of Religion which are felt to be too coarse for
their own nature and therefore infinitely unworthy of the spirit of God;
but because they leave the Church, that Christian Jerusalem, and come to
sit at the feet of Jesus in our humble Bethany, where at least he is
loved purely and for himself;—then this is Infidelity, and we who stay
the wanderer, and retain him within the fold, are called producers of
unbelief. The spirit of Jesus said, “he that is not against us is for
us.” The spirit of Trinitarianism says, “he that is not for us is
against us.” It was said that the spirit of infidelity is the spirit of
this age. I only ask, if this is so, could there be a more practical
condemnation of that system, and of that Church, which sways all the
religious influences of the country; and whose representations of Christ
and of Christianity, the universally prevailing ones, have produced the
religious character of these times? If there is Infidelity in the land,
it is mainly the recoil from Orthodoxy.[46]

3. It is said that Unitarianism encourages the pride of human Reason.
Now I shall answer this very briefly, because any lengthened exposure
would necessarily take the form of sarcasm. Whose Reason is it that we
oppose when we reject Trinitarianism? Trinitarians say that it is the
Reason of God. But how do they know this? Because they are sure that
_they_ know the Mind of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures; and
they are sure that _we_ are in error. Infallibility again! So that to
oppose _their_ interpretation of the Scriptures, is to set up our own
Reason against the Reason of God. Now I ask, in all simplicity, Can they
who say these things have taken the trouble to clear their own ideas? If
there is any pride of Reason, on which side does it lie? They first
identify their own sense of the Scriptures with God’s sense, and then
they charge other men with the pride of Reason, for not bowing down
their minds to God, having first taken it for granted that _their_
Reason and God’s Reason are one and the same. Look again to the
uncertain doctrines which they deduce from the Scriptures by processes
of inference, sometimes technical and sometimes mystical, and say, does
the world afford a more marked exemplification of the pride of human
Reason, than the absolute confidence with which these doubtful
conclusions are received, and not only that, but pressed upon men, as
the exact meaning of God, at the peril of their eternal Salvation? What
do these divines rest upon when they deduce from the Scriptures their
essentials of Christianity? Their own reasonings. And yet they will tell
you, that to differ from _them_, is to oppose your own Reason to the
mind of God. I ask, hereafter in this controversy, Should not this
matter of the pride of human reason be a weapon of attack in our hands,
an accusation against Trinitarians, instead of a charge which Unitarians
are to answer? We have too long, in this and many other matters, stood
upon the defensive.[47]

And now, in conclusion, let me say once more, that though we think
Trinitarian views of man’s connections with God injurious to Christian
perfection, inasmuch as they throw the minds which receive them out of
harmony with the realities of God, and must therefore undergo future
correction and re-adjustment, still our strongest objection to the
Trinitarian scheme is the fundamental one that it is based upon
principles of exclusiveness, upon the indispensable conditions of a
narrow and technical creed, and that thus it is the parent and fomenter
of all those dissensions and practical evils in religion which these
times witness and deplore. How many has orthodoxy persecuted into a
hatred for the very name of religion? In how many minds has it darkened,
or mixed up with the most incongruous associations, the beautiful image
of Christ, destroying its healing and persuasive power? O! why should it
be, except for this Trinitarian scheme of an Exclusive Salvation, that
Religion should be directing her whole energies to the support of
creeds, instead of going about doing good, and with her heavenly spirit
entering into conflict with the moral evils that afflict society, and
degrade man, and rebel against God? Why is it, that instead of this, we
have a distinct class of sufferings, that go under the name of religious
evils? Why is it that we are here holding controversy with our
fellow-Christians, instead of uniting our spirit and our strength to
work the works of Christ? We wage not this controversy for the purpose
of aiding a sect; but we wage it, to do what we can to expose and put
down universally the sectarian spirit. The great evils of society, the
crying wrongs of Man, are mainly owing to this diversion of Religion
from spiritual and practical objects to the strife of tongues and
Salvation by creeds. What is the Religion of this country doing?
Contending for creeds. What ought it to be doing? Spreading the spirit
of the life of Christ through the hearts of men and the institutions of
society. How long are these things to be? How long are the spiritual
influences of this country to be all consumed in striving with heresies
instead of striving with sins; leaving untouched the bad heart of
society, whilst wrangling for a metaphysical faith? Look to the
religious apparatus of this country. Look to the number of pulpits that
should send forth the spiritual influences of righteousness and peace;
and the number of men that should move through society apostles of the
beneficence of Christ.

Suppose all this strength directed to practical and spiritual objects,
and could the things that are, remain as they are, if the religious
forces of the country, instead of being exclusive, doctrinal,
controversial, were full of the love of Jesus, and sought simply to
establish the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth! Could Religion excite the
angry passions that she does, if her aims were spiritual and not
doctrinal? Could Religion be divorced as she is from practical life, and
confined to a class kept under powerful stimulants, and called the
“religious public,” if her aims were spiritual and not doctrinal? Could
Religion leave the people neglected and without education, practical
Heathens, while she is settling her creeds, if her aims were spiritual
and not doctrinal? Could Religion have left unpurified the streams and
sources of public morality, if her aims were spiritual and not
doctrinal? Could she have suffered War still to disgrace the world, and
not long since have extinguished the Earthborn passion by the Heavenly
spirit and the moral instrument, if the direction of her energies had
been spiritual and not controversial? Could she have shown so little
interest in the great mass of the people? Could she have abandoned them
to ignorance and grinding oppressions and not raised her omnipotent
voice on their behalf? Could she have so separated herself from the real
business of life and left the moralities of intercourse unsanctified
whilst she remained unsympathizing and cloistered? Every friend to
practical religion has an interest in destroying this exclusive
Theology, which turns away from the works of love to the war of creeds.

If then we preach Unitarianism, it is that we may win men’s hearts to
the one Spirit who pervades all things, and harmonizes all things, and
sends all blessings, and sanctifies all thoughts, all duties, and all
times. If we preach the man Christ Jesus, the word made flesh, it is
that we too may sanctify our nature, and make it a temple for the living
God, and grow up into him in all things who is our head, even Christ. If
we preach Salvation, not by creeds, but by the spirit of Christ in us,
the hope of glory, it is that our fitness for Heaven may commence on
Earth; that we may live now as those who when they have slept the brief
sleep of death shall awake in the presence of Christ and God, and find
themselves in that Heaven wherein dwelleth righteousness. And if we
preach not indiscriminate happiness and indiscriminate tortures in
futurity, but the just retributions of God, it is that we may redeem the
time, remembering that each moment lost throws us back on the heavenly
way, that there is an infinite perfection before us, providing work for
our infinite capacities through an immortal life; that God is faithful
and inflexible in his retributions; that no virtue shall be without its
reward, no sin without its woe; that we shall be judged according to our
works, and reap what we have sown.

To sum up, the two great principles of Unitarianism are these:—

I. Spiritual allegiance to Christ as the image of God. “Whom we preach,
warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may
present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”

II. Spiritual liberty from ought besides; Creeds, Traditions, Rituals,
or Priests. “False brethren, unawares brought in, who came in privily to
spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring
us into bondage: to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an
hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.”

APPENDIX.

---------------------

NOTE 1, page 14.

“The free and unprejudiced mind dwells with delight on the image of the
universal church or convocation of Christ, as it would naturally have
grown ‘into the fulness of the body’ of its glorious founder * * * *

“And what (let me earnestly and solemnly ask) has hitherto turned this
view into a mocking dream,—a dream that deludes by images which are the
very reverse of the sad realities which surround us? ORTHODOXY;—the
notion that the eternal happiness or misery of individuals is intimately
connected with the acceptance or rejection of a most obscure system of
metaphysics; a system perplexing in the extreme to those who are best
acquainted with its former technical, now obsolete language, and
perfectly unintelligible to the rest of the Christian world: a system
which, to say the least, _seems_ to contradict the simplest and most
primitive notions of the human mind concerning the unity, the justice,
and the goodness of the Supreme Being; a system which, if it be
contained in the Scriptures, has been laid under so thick and
impenetrable a veil, that thousands who have sought to discover it, with
the most eager desire of finding it, whose happiness in this world would
have been greatly increased by that discovery, and who, at all events,
would have escaped much misery had they been able to attest it, even on
the grounds of probability sufficient to acquit themselves before their
own conscience, have been compelled, by truth, to confess their want of
success. Yet Orthodoxy declares this very system identical with
Christianity—with that Gospel which was ‘preached to the poor,’ and
‘revealed unto babes;’ such a system, we are told, is that faith which,
‘_except every one keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall
perish everlastingly_.’”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy, by Rev. J. Blanco
White._

NOTE 2, page 18.

“What do divines understand by _Christian Truth_? The answer, at first,
appears obvious. ‘Christian truth (it will be said) is what Christ and
his apostles knew and taught concerning Salvation under the Gospel.’
Thus far we find no difficulty; but (let me ask, again) where does this
exist as an object _external_ to our minds? The answer appears no less
obvious than the former: ‘In the Bible.’ Still I must ask, Is the
MATERIAL Bible the Christian truth about which Christians dispute? No:
it will be readily said not the MATERIAL Bible, but the SENSE of the
Bible. Now (I beg to know) is the SENSE of the Bible an object
_external_ to our minds? Does any _Sense_ of the Bible, accessible to
man, exist anywhere but in the mind of each man who receives it from the
words he reads? The Divine mind certainly knows in what sense those
words were used; but as we cannot compare our mental impressions with
that model and original of all truth, it is clear that by the SENSE of
the Bible we must mean our own sense of its meaning. When therefore any
man declares his intention to defend _Christian truth_, he only
expresses his determination to defend his _own notions_, as produced by
the words of the Bible. No other _Christian truth_ exists for us in our
present state.”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy._

NOTE 3, page 22.

“If different men in carefully and conscientiously examining the
Scriptures, should arrive at different conclusions, even on points of
the last importance, we trust that God, who alone knows what every man
is capable of, will be merciful to him that is in error. We trust that
He will pardon the Unitarian, if he be in error, because he has fallen
into it from the dread of becoming an idolater—of giving that glory to
another which he conceives to be due to God alone. If the worshipper of
Jesus Christ be in error, we trust that God will pardon his mistake,
because he has fallen into it from the dread of disobeying what he
conceives to be revealed concerning the nature of the Son, or commanded
concerning the honor to be given him. Both are actuated by the same
principle—the fear of God; and though that principle impels them into
different roads, it is our hope and belief, that if they add to their
faith _charity_, they will meet in Heaven.”—_Watson._

“We should learn to be cautious, lest we _charge God foolishly_, by
ascribing that to him, or the Nature he has given us, which is owing
wholly to our own abuse of it. Men may speak of the degeneracy and
corruption of the world, according to the experience they have had of
it; but human nature, considered as the divine workmanship, should,
methinks, be treated as sacred: for _in the image of God made he
man_.”—_Bishop Butler._

NOTE 4, page 24.

“But, if ORTHODOXY cannot be the principle of union among _Christians_,
upon what are men to agree in order to belong to the CONVOCATION, or
people of Christ? I believe that the Apostle Paul has said enough to
answer this question. When by using the word _anathema_, he rejects from
his spiritual society even an angel from Heaven, were it possible that
such a being should “preach another gospel,” he lays down the only
principle, without which there can be no communion among Christians.
Unhappily the word GOSPEL, like the word FAITH, is constantly understood
as expressing a certain number of dogmatical articles. Owing to this
perversion of the original meaning, these very passages of Paul are
conceived to support the long-established notion that Orthodoxy is the
only condition of Christian communion; and want of it, a sufficient
cause for _anathema_. I have, however, already proved, that Orthodoxy,
without a supreme judge of religious opinions, is a phantom; and since
it is demonstrable that no such judge has been appointed, it clearly
follows that the Apostle Paul, by the name of _Gospel_, could not mean a
string of dogmatic assertions. It is necessary, therefore, to ascend to
the original signification of the word Gospel, if we are not to
misunderstand the reason of the anathema pronounced by Paul. Let such as
wish to rise above the clouds of theological prejudice, remember that
the whole mystery of godliness is described by the expression ‘glad
tidings.’ _Sad_, not glad tidings, indeed, would have been the Apostles’
preaching, if they had announced a salvation depending on _Orthodoxy_,
for (as I have said before) it would have been a salvation depending on
chance. But salvation promised on condition of a change of mind from the
love of sin to the love of God (which is _repentance_); on a surrender
of the individual will to the will of God, according to the view of that
divine will which is obtained by trust in Christ’s example and teaching,
which is _faith_; a pardon of sins independent of harassing religious
practices, sacrifices, and ascetic privations—these were ‘glad tidings
of great joy,’ indeed, to all who, caring for their souls, felt
bewildered between atheism and superstition.”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy._

NOTE 5, page 27.

“Men want an object of worship like themselves, and the great secret of
idolatry lies in this propensity. A God, clothed in our form, and
feeling our wants and sorrows, speaks to our weak nature more strongly,
than a Father in Heaven, a pure spirit, invisible and unapproachable,
save by the reflecting and purified mind. We think, too, that the
peculiar offices ascribed to Jesus by the popular theology, make him the
most attractive person in the Godhead. The Father is the depositary of
the justice, the vindicator of the rights, the avenger of the laws of
the Divinity. On the other hand, the Son, the brightness of the divine
mercy, stands between the incensed Deity and guilty humanity, exposes
his meek head to the storms, and his compassionate breast to the sword
of the divine justice, bears our whole load of punishment, and purchases
with his blood every blessing which descends from Heaven. Need we state
the effect of these representations, especially on common minds, for
whom Christianity was chiefly designed, and whom it seeks to bring to
the Father as the loveliest being? We do believe, that the worship of a
bleeding, suffering God, tends strongly to absorb the mind, and to draw
it from other objects, just as the human tenderness of the Virgin Mary
has given her so conspicuous a place in the devotions of the Church of
Rome. We believe, too, that this worship, though attractive, is not most
fitted to spiritualize the mind, that it awakens human transports,
rather than that deep veneration of the moral perfections of God, which
is the essence of piety.

“We are told, also, that Christ is a more interesting object, that his
love and mercy are more felt, when he is viewed as the Supreme God, who
left his glory to take humanity and to suffer for men. That Trinitarians
are strongly moved by this representation, we do not mean to deny; but
we think their emotions altogether founded on a misapprehension of their
own doctrines. They talk of the second person of the Trinity’s leaving
his glory and his Father’s bosom to visit and save the world. But this
second person being the unchangeable and infinite God, was evidently
incapable of parting with the least degree of his perfection and
felicity. At the moment of his taking flesh, he was as intimately
present with his Father as before, and equally with his Father filled
heaven, and earth, and immensity. This Trinitarians acknowledge; and
still they profess to be touched and overwhelmed by the amazing
humiliation of this immutable being! But not only does their doctrine,
when fully explained, reduce Christ’s humiliation to a fiction, it
almost wholly destroys the impressions with which his cross ought to be
viewed. According to their doctrine, Christ was, comparatively, no
sufferer at all. It is true his human mind suffered; but this, they tell
us, was an infinitely small part of Jesus, bearing no more proportion to
his whole nature, than a single hair of our heads to the whole body, or
than a drop to the ocean. The divine mind of Christ, that which was more
properly himself, was infinitely happy, at the very moment of the
suffering of his humanity; whilst hanging on the cross, he was the
happiest being in the universe, as happy as the infinite Father; so that
his pains, compared with his felicity, were nothing. This Trinitarians
do, and must acknowledge. It follows necessarily from the immutableness
of the divine nature, which they ascribe to Christ; so that their system
justly viewed, robs his death of interest, weakens our sympathy with his
sufferings, and is, of all others, most unfavourable to a love of
Christ, founded on a sense of his sacrifices for mankind. We esteem our
own views to be vastly more affecting. It is our belief, that Christ’s
humiliation was real and entire, that the whole Saviour and not a part
of him suffered, that his crucifixion was a scene of deep and unmixed
agony. As we stand round his cross, our minds are not distracted, nor
our sensibility weakened by contemplating him as composed of incongruous
and infinitely differing minds, and as having a balance of infinite
felicity. We recognize in the dying Jesus but one mind. This, we think,
renders his sufferings, and his patience, and love, in bearing them;
incomparably more impressive and affecting, than the system we
oppose.”—_Channing._

NOTE 6, Page 29.

“We believe, too, that this system is unfavourable to the character. It
naturally leads men to think that Christ came to change God’s mind,
rather than their own; that the highest object of his mission was to
avert punishment rather than to communicate holiness; and that a large
part of religion consists in disparaging good works and human virtue,
for the purpose of magnifying the value of Christ’s vicarious
sufferings. In this way, a sense of the infinite importance and
indispensable necessity of personal improvement is weakened, and high
sounding praises of Christ’s cross seem often to be substituted for
obedience to his precepts. For ourselves, we have not so learned Jesus.
Whilst we gratefully acknowledge that he came to rescue us from
punishment, we believe that he was sent on a still nobler errand,
namely, to deliver us from sin itself, and to form us to a sublime and
heavenly virtue. We regard him as a Saviour, chiefly as he is the light,
physician, and guide of the dark, diseased, and wandering mind. No
influence in the universe seems to us so glorious as that over the
character; and no redemption so worthy of thankfulness as the
restoration of the soul to purity. Without this, pardon, if it were
possible, would be of little value. Why pluck the sinner from hell, if a
hell be left to burn in his own breast? Why raise him to heaven, if he
remain a stranger to its sanctity and love? With these impressions, we
are accustomed to value the gospel chiefly as it abounds in effectual
aids, motives, excitements to a generous and divine virtue. In this
virtue, as in a common centre, we see all its doctrines, precepts,
promises meet; and we believe that faith in this religion is of no
worth, and contributes nothing to salvation, any further than as it uses
these doctrines, precepts, promises, and the whole life, character,
sufferings and triumphs of Jesus, as the means of purifying the mind, of
changing it into the likeness of his celestial excellence.”—_Channing._

NOTE 7, page 37.

“I can direct you to nothing in Christ more important than his tried,
and victorious, and perfect goodness. Others may love Christ for his
mysterious attributes; I love him for the rectitude of his soul and
life. I love him for that benevolence which went through Judea,
instructing the ignorant, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind. I
love him for that universal charity which comprehended the despised
publican, the hated Samaritan, the benighted heathen, and sought to
bring a world to God and to happiness. I love him for that gentle, mild,
forbearing spirit, which no insult, outrage, injury, could overpower;
and which desired as earnestly the repentance and happiness of its foes
as the happiness of its friends. I love him for the spirit of
magnanimity, constancy, and fearless rectitude with which, amid peril
and opposition, he devoted himself to the work which God gave him to do.
I love him for the wise and enlightened zeal with which he espoused the
true, the spiritual interests of mankind, and through which he lived and
died to redeem them from every sin, to frame them after his own God-like
virtue. I love him, I have said, for his moral excellence; I know
nothing else to love. I know nothing so glorious in the Creator or his
creatures. This is the greatest gift which God bestows, the greatest to
be derived from his Son. You see why I call you to cherish the love of
Christ. This love I do not recommend as a luxury of feeling, as an
exstasy bringing immediate and overflowing joy. I view it in a nobler
light; I call you to love Jesus, that you may bring yourselves into
contact and communion with perfect virtue, and may become what you love.
I know no sincere, enduring good, but the moral excellence that shines
forth in Jesus Christ. Your health, your outward comforts and
distinctions, are poor, mean, contemptible, compared with this; and to
prefer them to this is self-debasement, self-destruction. May this great
truth penetrate our souls; and may we bear witness in our common lives,
and especially in trial, in sore temptation, that nothing is so dear to
us as the virtue of Christ! * * *

“Thus Jesus lived with men; with the consciousness of unutterable
majesty he joined a lowliness, gentleness, humanity, and sympathy, which
have no example in human history. I ask you to contemplate this
wonderful union. In proportion to the superiority of Jesus to all around
him was the intimacy, the brotherly love, with which he bound himself to
them. I maintain, that this is a character wholly remote from human
conception. To imagine it to be the production of imposture or
enthusiasm, shows a strange unsoundness of mind. I contemplate it with a
veneration second only to the profound awe with which I look up to God.
It bears no mark of human invention. It was real. It belonged to, and it
manifested, the beloved Son of God.

“But I have not done. May I ask your attention a few moments more? We
have not yet reached the depth of Christ’s character. We have not
touched the great principle on which his wonderful sympathy was founded,
and which endeared him to his office of universal Saviour. Do you ask
what this deep principle was? I answer, it was his conviction of the
greatness of the human soul. He saw in man the impress and image of the
Divinity, and therefore thirsted for his redemption; and took the
tenderest interest in him, whatever might be the rank, character, or
condition in which he was found. This spiritual view of man pervades and
distinguishes the teaching of Christ. Jesus looked on men with an eye
which pierced beneath the material frame. The body vanished before him.
The trappings of the rich, the rags of the poor, were nothing to him. He
looked through them, as though they did not exist, to the soul; and
there, amidst clouds of ignorance and plague-spots of sin, he recognized
a spiritual and immortal nature, and the germs of power and perfection
which might be unfolded for ever. In the most fallen and depraved man,
he saw a being who might become an angel of light. Still more, he felt
that there was nothing in himself to which men might not ascend. His own
lofty consciousness did not sever him from the multitude; for he saw, in
his own greatness, the model of what men might become. So deeply was he
thus impressed, that again and again, in speaking of his future glories,
he announced that in these his true followers were to share. They were
to sit on his throne, and partake of his beneficent power. Here I pause;
and I know not, indeed, what can be added to heighten the wonder,
reverence, and love which are due to Jesus. When I consider him not only
as possessed with the consciousness of an unexampled and unbounded
majesty, but as recognizing a kindred nature in all human beings, and
living and dying to raise them to an anticipation of his divine glories;
and when I see him, under these views, allying himself to men by the
tenderest ties, embracing them with a spirit of humanity, which no
insult, injury, or pain could for a moment repel or overpower, I am
filled with wonder, as well as reverence and love. I feel that this
character is not of human invention, that it was not assumed through
fraud, or struck out by enthusiasm; for it is infinitely above their
reach. When I add this character of Jesus to the other evidences of his
religion, it gives to what before seemed so strong a new and vast
accession of strength; I feel as if I could not be deceived. The Gospels
must be true; they were drawn from a living original; they were founded
on reality. The character of Christ is not fiction; he was what he
claimed to be, and what his followers attested. Nor is this all. Jesus
not only _was_, he is still, the Son of God,—the Saviour of the world.
He exists now; he has entered that Heaven to which he always looked
forward on earth. There he lives and reigns. With a clear, calm faith, I
see him in that state of glory; and I confidently expect, at no distant
period, to see him face to face. We have, indeed, no absent friend whom
we shall so surely meet. Let us then, by imitations of his virtues, and
obedience to his word, prepare ourselves to join him in those pure
mansions where he is surrounding himself with the good and pure of our
race, and will communicate to them for ever his own spirit, power, and
joy.”—_Channing._

NOTE 8, Page 38.

“At the present moment I would ask, whether it is a vice to doubt the
truth of Christianity as it is manifested in Spain and Portugal. When a
patriot in those benighted countries, who knows Christianity only as a
bulwark of despotism, as a rearer of inquisitions, as a stern jailer
immuring wretched women in the convent, as an executioner stained and
reeking with the blood of the friends of freedom,—I say when the
patriot, who sees in our religion the instruments of these crimes and
woes, believes and affirms that it is not from God, are we authorized to
charge his unbelief on dishonesty and corruption of mind, and to brand
him as a culprit? May it not be that the spirit of Christianity in his
heart emboldens him to protest with his lips against what bears the
name? And if he thus protest, through a deep sympathy with the
oppression and sufferings of his race, is he not nearer the kingdom of
God than the priest and the inquisitor who boastingly and exclusively
assume the Christian name? Jesus Christ has told us that ‘this is the
condemnation’ of the unbelieving, ‘that they love darkness rather than
light;’ and who does not see that this ground of condemnation is
removed, just in proportion as the light is quenched, or Christian truth
is buried in darkness and debasing error?”—_Channing._

* * * * *

“I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is True. It is true;
and its truth is to break forth more and more gloriously. Of this I have
not a doubt. I know that our religion has been questioned even by
intelligent and good men; but this does not shake my faith in its divine
original or in its ultimate triumphs. Such men have questioned it,
because they have known it chiefly by its corruptions. In proportion as
its original simplicity shall be restored, the doubts of the
well-disposed will yield. I have no fears from infidelity; especially
from that form of it which some are at this moment labouring to spread
through our country (America). I mean, that insane, desperate unbelief,
which strives to quench the light of nature as well as of revelation,
and to leave us, not only without Christ, but without God. This I dread
no more than I should fear the efforts of men to pluck the sun from his
sphere; or to storm the skies with the artillery of the earth. We were
made for religion; and unless the enemies of our faith can change our
nature, they will leave the foundation of religion unshaken. The human
soul was created to look above material nature. It wants a Deity for its
love and trust, an Immortality for its hope. It wants consolations not
found in philosophy, wants strength in temptation, sorrow, and death,
which human wisdom cannot minister; and knowing, as I do, that
Christianity meets these deep wants of men, I have no fear or doubts as
to its triumphs. Men cannot long live without religion. In France there
is a spreading dissatisfaction with the sceptical spirit of the past
generation. A philosopher in that country would now blush to quote
Voltaire as an authority in religion. Already atheism is dumb where once
it seemed to bear sway. The greatest minds in France are working back
their way to the light of truth. Many of them cannot indeed yet be
called Christians; but their path, like that of the wise men of old, who
came star-guided from the East, is towards Christ. I am not ashamed of
the Gospel of Christ. It has an immortal life, and will gather strength
from the violence of its foes. It is equal to all the wants of men. The
greatest minds have found in it the light which they most anxiously
desired. The most sorrowful and broken spirits have found in it a
healing balm for their woes. It has inspired the sublimest virtues and
the loftiest hopes. For the corruptions of such a religion I weep, and I
should blush to be their advocate; but of the Gospel itself I can never
be ashamed.”—_Channing._

NOTE 9, page 39.

“Having found that _pride of reason is an aggression upon other men’s
reason_, arising from an over-estimate of the worth of the aggressor’s
own, we may now proceed in our inquiry, who are justly chargeable with
pride of _reason_? Is it those who, having examined the Scriptures,
propose their own collective sense of those books to the acceptance of
others, but blame them not for rejecting it? or those who positively
assert, that their own sense of the Scriptures is the only one which an
honest man, not under diabolical delusion, can find there? The answer is
so plain, that a child, who could understand the terms of the question,
might give it. And yet experience has taught me that there is no chance
of unravelling the confused ideas which prevent many a well-meaning
Christian from perceiving that the charge of the pride of reason falls
upon the Orthodox. Their own _sense_ of the Scripture (such is the dizzy
whirl which their excited feelings produce) must be the _word of God_,
because THEY cannot find another. _My sense_ of the Scripture must, (for
instance,) on the contrary, be a damnable error, because it is the work
of my _reason_, which opposes the word of God, _i.e._, THEIR sense of
the Scriptures: hence the conclusion that I am guilty of _pride of
reason_. ‘Renounce that _pride_, (they say,) and you will see in the
Scriptures what we propose to you:’ which is to say, _surrender your
reason to ours, and you will agree with us_. * * *

“It is remarkable that Christians are accused of _Pride of reason_ in
proportion as their view of Christianity contains fewer _doctrines of
inference_ than that of the accusers. Compare the creed of the
Trinitarian with that of the Unitarian. The former may be true, and the
latter erroneous, though I adhere to the latter; but unquestionably the
_Trinitarian Creed_ is nearly made up of _inferences_, it is almost
entirely a work of _reason_, though, in my eyes, sadly misapplied. Why,
then, is the _Unitarian_ accused of _pride of reason_, when he only
employs it to show that the Trinitarian has not any _sound reason_ to
draw those inferences? which of the two is guilty of encroaching upon
another man’s _rights of reason_? Is it not he who claims for his
inferences—the work of his own _reason_—an authority above human
_reason_?

“It is not, however, to _inferences_ alone (the work of logical reason)
that the Trinitarian creed owes its existence, and, more than its
existence, its popularity. My observation has shown me, and that of
every competent judge will find, that the strongest hold which that
creed has on the minds of its supporters, consists in _preconceived
theories_ concerning the nature of God and of sin, and of some
_necessity_ which places the Divine Nature in a state of difficulty in
regard to the pardon of sin. The work of saving the race of man from a
most horrible fate depends (according to this theory) not only on a very
mysterious method of overcoming the difficulty which prevents pardon by
an act of mercy, on repentance, but also on the acknowledgment of the
_mystery_ by the sinner. The remedy prepared by the wisdom of God is
(according to this theory) totally powerless, unless we believe a
certain explanation of the _manner_ in which it acts.

“Now people who cordially embrace this view very naturally work
themselves into a state of the most agonizing excitement: for if the
whole world is to perish because it does not know how the saving remedy
acts, or because its activity is explained in a wrong way, benevolent
men, who think themselves in possession of that important secret, must
burn with zeal to spread it, and with indignation against those who
propagate an explanation which deprives the remedy of all its power.
‘Believing,’ says an orthodox writer, though a dissenter from the
orthodoxy of the Church of England, ‘the doctrine (of the divinity of
Christ) to comprehend within itself the hopes of a guilty and perishing
world, while I would contend _meekly_, I must be pardoned if, at the
same time, I contend earnestly.’ It is this preconceived theory (one of
the strangest that was ever founded on reasonings _à priori_) that
guides most Christians in the exposition of the New Testament, and even
in that of many passages of the Hebrew Scriptures. The notion that sin
_could not_ be pardoned unless a person _equal to God_ suffered for it,
is the deeply-coloured glass through which the orthodox read the
Scriptures. I do not _blame_ them for this extraordinary conception.
What I earnestly wish is, that their religious fears may allow them to
perceive that this theory of redemption is made up of _preconceived
notions and inferences_. Even if that theory were true, it would
unquestionably be a work of _reason_ working by inference. Can, then,
the attempt to make it the very soul of the Gospel be acquitted of the
charge which is constantly in the mouth of the orthodox? Are they not
guilty of the _pride of reason_?”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Comments on Rev. F. Ould’s Lecture on the practical
importance of the Controversy with Unitarians._

Page 5.—It is here argued that the error, if an error, of denying
Unitarians to be Christians is as _innocent_, as the error, if one, of
denying Jesus to be God. Certainly, if equally involuntary and the pure
conclusion of a truthful mind. But, if an error, it involves two
errors,—first, the mistake as to the nature and offices of Jesus, and
second, the mistake of making essentials which Jesus did not make, and
of passing judgments which Jesus did not pass. It is also essentially
Anti-Protestant.

Page 6.—“But if it be a characteristic of true Christianity so to trust
in Christ, as to commit the salvation of our souls into his hands, how
can we conceive of those as true Christians who consider him only a
fellow-creature, and consequently repose in him no such trust?” Trust is
a _moral_ act of the mind. We trust Jesus spiritually. Our souls feel
him to be the Image of God: and we confide ourselves with a perfect
trust to the God of Love whom Jesus imaged. “Let not your hearts be
troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” Our hearts are not
troubled because our faith rests upon the God whom Jesus has made known
to us. This is the only intelligible meaning of TRUST as a spiritual
act. We trust _him_ whom we believe God to have trusted and sent.

Page 8.—“We maintain that the Bible is alone safely interpreted by its
Author and Inspirer, the Holy Ghost.” Do the Trinitarians mean that
_their_ interpretations of the Bible are the interpretations of the Holy
Spirit? If so, we can have no controversy with them. If they are
inspired to interpret, what the Apostles were inspired to write, nothing
is required but _that this should be proved_.

Pages 11, 12.—“The New Testament writers also assert their own
inspiration in language equally strong. ‘All Scripture is given by
inspiration of God, and is profitable,’ &c. St. Paul does _not_ here
assert _his own_ inspiration, but the inspiration of the Jewish
Prophets, the study of whom had made Timothy wise unto salvation through
faith in Christ. The Christian Scriptures were not in existence when the
words were written. It is also very doubtful whether the word
translated, ‘given by inspiration of God,’ signifies ‘breathing _of_
God,’ or ‘breathed _from_ God.’

“‘No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation,’ &c.
The inspiration of Prophecy is not denied. But can anything be more idle
than to prove the inspiration of all the books of the Old Testament by
such a quotation as this: ‘Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of
Jerusalem, believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established;
believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper’?”

Page 16.—“So then, it appears, that if these ‘rational and liberal’
critics are not allowed to Unitarianize the Bible, they are prepared to
deny its divine authority, and to give it up to its enemies!” Dr.
Channing _does not say so_. What he says is, that he cannot defend the
Scriptures unless he is allowed to interpret them by the same principles
which are applied to all other works. And this principle of
interpretation we understood Dr. Tattershall freely to admit. The use
that is made of the extract from Dr. Channing, exhibits the temptations
of controversy. There is nothing in the extract that Trinitarians
themselves would not say upon occasion. Why is it thought worthy of
being marked in italics that the dispensation of Moses is imperfect when
compared with that of Jesus? Is this denied? Why is the word _seems_
italicized, when the connected word is not rejects, but only
_distrusts_? Yet the author praises the candour of Dr. Channing.

Pages 20, 21.—“The improved Version.” It is a curious fact that most of
the Trinitarian objections to the Improved Version have been provided
for them by an Unitarian Critic and Reviewer. Dr. Carpenter in his reply
to Archbishop Magee states, “I furnished to the opponents of the
Improved Version some of the most powerful weapons against it.” Again,
“At my request a young friend undertook to draw up the table I wished.
This led him to collate the two Versions, which he did with great
patience and fidelity. He discovered some variations from the basis
which were not noticed; and I thought it right to point them out. It is
not too much to say that, but for this, neither Bishop Magee, nor any
others who have censured the Improved Version, would have been aware of
their existence.”—pp. 308, 309. Whatever becomes of the Improved
Version, the Controversy between Unitarianism and Trinitarianism remains
just where it was, to be settled upon independent principles, critical
and exegetical. So far, the whole indictment against the Improved
Version relates to the introductory chapters of Matthew and Luke.
Suppose those chapters authentic and genuine, and what follows from
them? The doctrine of the Miraculous Conception, which most Unitarians
believe. Professor Norton, the ablest, perhaps, of American Unitarian
Critics, defends this doctrine. The introductory chapters of Matthew he
rejects, chiefly on account of their inconsistencies with those of Luke,
the authenticity of which he does not doubt. Dr. Carpenter also
critically dissents from the Notes in the Improved Version on the
introductions of Matthew and Luke. Reply to Dr. Magee, p. 299. It is not
then such a _new_ thing among Unitarians, to question the authority of
the Improved Version. Will the Author inform us where he got his
knowledge respecting Ebion, his existence and opinions?

Page 25.—In an introductory Lecture on the “_practical” tendencies_ of
views, we labour under the disadvantage of being obliged to allow
scriptural language to be quoted in a sense which we do not admit. It
would be evidently quite out of place to enter here into the _textual_
controversy. This will be done abundantly in the course of these
Lectures.

Page 37.—Does the Author deny that Free Inquiry generates a degree of
scepticism—that is, not of unbelief, but of the examining and
questioning spirit? Or does he mean to object to all free inquiry on
account of this tendency? It is extraordinary reasoning to take Dr.
Channing’s _caution against a sceptical spirit_, proceeding from the
very constitution of mind, as a proof of the tendency of Unitarianism to
infidelity. If Unitarianism leads to unbelief, it is strange that so
many Unitarians should defend the Evidences of Christianity, and that
one of them, Dr. Lardner, is the great authority from which Trinitarians
themselves draw their knowledge of the external testimonies.

Page 39.—“Another leading principle, common to both systems,
(Unitarianism and Infidelity,) is _the non-importance of principle
itself to the enjoyment of the Divine favour_.” Let it be known, that by
_principle_ here, the Author means _opinions_.

Page 41.—“Does the Deist reject the Bible because God is represented as
a being who takes vengeance? So does the Unitarian for the very same
reason reject the Gospel. Does the Deist reject the Bible because it
contains the doctrine of atonement and of divine sovereignty? For the
very same reason the Unitarian rejects the Gospel.” It is melancholy to
have to remark upon this passage. The Unitarian _does not reject the
Gospel_, unless the Gospel means Trinitarianism, a use of words which,
in controversy, cannot be justified. The Unitarian does not deny that
God takes vengeance, if by vengeance is meant the infliction of
retribution. The Unitarian accepts the Gospel, but _does not find in it_
the doctrine of Atonement.

Page 46.—“How, on Unitarian principles, this reasoning can be answered,
is more than I can tell.” Jesus _did_ refer to God both his words and
his works. But Unitarians do not regard the mission of Jesus as similar
to that of any of the Prophets. It was essentially different. He was
himself the Revelation: a man in the image of God. By the Prophets, God
taught the Jews certain lessons, and inspired certain expectations. By
Jesus, in whom was the spirit without measure, God exhibited a perfect
revelation both of human perfection and of human destinies. God’s word
was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us. The purposes of the Deity were
impersonated. He was consequently the life, and the way, as well as the
truth.

Page 59.—Does the Author mean to contend that Thomas was an INSPIRED MAN
when he refused to believe in the risen Jesus? We had thought the
Trinitarian view was, that the day of Pentecost dated the inspiration of
the apostles. But it appears the Author believes Thomas to be inspired
when refusing to believe in the resurrection of Christ.

Page 60.—Is not the Author aware of the doubtful authenticity of the
second epistle of Peter, from which he quotes twice, contrary to the
judgment of Lardner, who decides that the doubtful Epistles, so stated
by Eusebius, should not be used as authority for doctrines?

There are other passages in this Lecture on which we might comment. But
we refrain. We wished to remark upon those passages which affect the
cause, and not more than was unavoidable upon those which affect only
the advocate.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture I.

Footnote 22:

John iv. 23, 24.

Footnote 23:

Luke xvii. 20, 21.

Footnote 24:

John xiv. 21; xv. 8, 9, 10.

Footnote 25:

John xiii. 35.

Footnote 26:

John xiv. 28.

Footnote 27:

John xvii. 3.

Footnote 28:

1 John ii. 3, 5, 29; iii. 7.

Footnote 29:

John x. 16; xvii. 20, 21.

Footnote 30:

Ephes. iv.

Footnote 31:

1 Cor. xii.

Footnote 32:

Note 1.

Footnote 33:

The Oxford Tracts, No. 80, as quoted in “Dr. Hook’s ‘Call to Union,’
answered.”

Footnote 34:

Newman on Justification.

Footnote 35:

Newman.

Footnote 36:

Note 2.

Footnote 37:

It is absurd to say that a work becomes a standard authority, because
a Book Society admits it into its Catalogue, or thinks its objects of
sufficient importance to aid in its publication. Doubtless the
Unitarian Society thought the “Improved Version” valuable as a
Scriptural aid.

Footnote 38:

Note 3.

Footnote 39:

Note 4.

Footnote 40:

See Rev. F. Ould’s Lecture, page 35.

Footnote 41:

Rom. xiv. 17.

Footnote 42:

Note 5.

Footnote 43:

Gal. ii. 17.

Footnote 44:

Note 6.

Footnote 45:

Note 7.

Footnote 46:

Note 8.

Footnote 47:

Note 9.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE BIBLE:

WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.

---------------------

LECTURE II.

THE BIBLE: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT IS NOT.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

“AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND DWELT AMONG US, (AND WE BEHELD HIS
GLORY, THE GLORY AS OF THE ONLY BEGOTTEN OF THE FATHER,) FULL OF
GRACE AND TRUTH.”—_John_ i. 14.

The Bible is the great autobiography of human nature, from its infancy
to its perfection. Whatever man has seen and felt and done on the
theatre of this earth, is expressed therein with the simplicity and
vividness of personal consciousness. The first wondering impressions of
the new-created being, just dropt upon a scene quite strange;—the
hardened heart and daring crimes of the long-resident here, forgetting
that he dwells in a hospice of the Lord, and not a property of his
own;—the recalled and penitent spirit, awakened by the voice of Christ,
when, to a world grown old and dead in custom, he brought back the
living presence of God, and to the first reverence added the maturest
love;—all this is recorded there, written down in the happiest moments
of inspiration which have fallen upon our race during the lapse of
sixteen centuries. The volume stations us on a spot, well selected as a
watch-tower, from which we may overlook the history of the world;—an
angle of coast between the ancient continents of Africa and Asia,
subtended by the newer line of European civilization. Thence have we a
neighbouring view of every form of human life, and every variety of
human character. The solitary shepherd on the slopes of Chaldæa,
watching the changing heavens till he worships them; the patriarch
pitching his tent in the nearer plain of Mamre; the Arab, half merchant,
half marauder, hurrying his fleet dromedaries across the sunny desert;
the Phœnician commerce gladdening the Levant with its sails, or, on its
way from India, spreading its wares in the streets of Jerusalem; the
urban magnificence of Babylonia, and the sacerdotal grandeur of Egypt;
all are spread beneath our eye, in colours vivid, but with passage
swift. Even the echo of Grecian revolutions, and the tramp of Roman
armies, and the incipient rush of Eastern nations, that will overwhelm
them both, may be distinctly heard; brief agents, every one, on this
stage of Providence, beckoned forward by the finger of Omnipotence, and
waved off again by the signals of mercy ever new.

The interest of this wide and various scriptural scene, gradually
gathers itself in towards a single point. There is One who stands at the
place where its converging lines all meet; and we are led over the
expanse of world-history, that we may rest at length beneath the eye of
the Prophet of Nazareth. He is the central object, around whom all the
ages and events of the Bible are but an outlying circumference; and when
they have brought us to this place of repose, to return upon them again
would be an idle wandering. They are all preliminaries, that accomplish
their end in leading us hither.—“The law,” aye, and the prophets too, we
esteem “our schoolmasters to bring us to Christ:”[48] and though, like
grateful pupils, we may look back on them with true-hearted respect, and
even think their labours not thrown away on such as may still be
children in the Lord, we have no idea of acknowledging any more the
authority of the task, the threat, the rod. To sit at the feet of Jesus
we take to be the only proper position for the true disciple; to listen
to his voice “the one thing needful;” and however much others,
notwithstanding that he is come, may make themselves “anxious and
troubled about many things” besides, and fret themselves still about the
preparations for his entertainment, we choose to quit all else, and keep
close to him, as that better “part, which shall not be taken from” us.
Whatever holy influences of the Divine Word may be found in the old
Scriptures, are all collected into one at length; “the Word hath been
made Flesh,” and in a living form hath “dwelt among us;” and from its
fulness of “grace and truth” we will not be torn away.

If the ultimate ends of Scripture are attained in Christ, that portion
of the Bible which makes us most intimate with him, must be of paramount
interest. Compelled then as I am, by my limits, to narrow our inquiry
into the proper treatment of Scripture, I take up the New Testament
exclusively, and especially the Gospels, for examination and comment
to-night.

Suppose then that these books are put into our hands for the first
time;—disinterred, if you please, from a chamber in Pompeii;—without
title, name, date, or other external description; and that with
unembarrassed mind and fresh heart, we go apart with these treasures to
examine them.

It is not long before their extraordinary character becomes evident. All
minds are known by their works,—the human quite as distinctly as the
Divine: and if “the invisible things of God” “are clearly seen” “by the
things that are made,” and on the material structures of the universe
the moral attributes of his nature may be discerned,—with much greater
certainty do the secret qualities of a man’s soul,—his honesty or
cunning, his truthfulness or fraud,—impress themselves on his speech and
writings. To a clear eye his moral nature will unerringly betray itself,
even in a disquisition; more, in a fiction; more still, in a history;
and most of all, in a biography of a personal companion and teacher,
drawing forth in turns his friendship and grief, his pity and terror,
his love and doubt and trust, his feelings to country, to duty, to God,
to heaven. Accordingly in these Gospels, and in the Journal of travels
and Collection of letters, which carry out and illustrate the
development of a new religion, I find myself in the presence of honest
and earnest men, who are plainly strangers to fiction and philosophy,
and lead me through realities fairer and diviner than either. They take
me to actual places, and tell the events of a known and definite time.
They conduct me through villages, and streets, and markets; to
frequented resorts of worship, and hostile halls of justice, and the
tribunals of Roman rulers, and the theatres of Asiatic cities, and the
concourse of Mars’ hill at Athens: so that there is no denying their
appeal, these things were “not done in a corner.”[49] Yet their frank
delineation of public life is less impressive, than their true and
tender touches of private history. Following in the steps of the world’s
domestic prophet, they entered, evening and morning, the homes of
men,—especially of men in watching and in grief, the wasted in body or
the sick in soul: and the unconsciousness with which the most genuine
traits of nature gleam through the narrative, the infantile simplicity
with which every one’s emotions, of sorrow, of repentance, of affection,
give themselves to utterance, indicate that, with One who bare the key
of hearts, the writers had been into the deep places of our humanity.
The infants in his arms look up in the face of Jesus as we read; the
Pharisee mutters in our ear his sceptic discontent at that loving “woman
who was a sinner” kneeling at the Teacher’s feet; and the voice of the
bereaved sisters of Lazarus trembles upon the page.

But, above all, these writings introduce me to a Being so unimaginable,
except by the great Inventor of beauty and Architect of nature himself,
that I embrace him at once, as having all the reality of man and the
divinest inspiration of God. Gentle and unconstrained as he is, ever
standing, even on the brink of the most stupendous miracles, in the
easiest attitudes of our humanity, so that we are drawn to him as to one
of like nature, we yet cannot enter his presence without feeling our
souls transformed. Their greatness, first recognized by him, becomes
manifest to ourselves: the death of conscience is broken by his tones;
the sense of accountability takes life within the deep; new thoughts of
duty, shed from his lips, shame us for the past, and kindle us for the
future with hope and faith unknown before. His promise[50] fulfils
itself, whilst he utters it; and whenever we truly love him, God comes,
and “makes his abode with” us. He has this peculiarity: that he plunges
us into the feeling, that God acts not _there_, but _here_; not _was
once_, but _is now_; dwells, not _without us_, like a dreadful sentinel,
but _within us_ as a heavenly spirit, befriending us in weakness, and
bracing us for conflict. The inspiration of Christ is not any solitary,
barren, incommunicable prodigy; but diffusive, creative, vivifying as
the energy of God:—not gathered up and concentrated in himself, as an
object of distant wonder; but reproducing itself, though in fainter
forms, in the faithful hearts to which it spreads. While in him it had
no human origin, but was spontaneous and primitive, flowing directly
from the perception and affinity of God, it enters our souls as a gift
from his nearer spirit, making us one with him, as he is one with the
Eternal Father. Children of God indeed we all are: nor is there any mind
without his image: but in this Man of Sorrows the divine lineaments are
so distinct, the filial resemblance to the Parent-spirit is so full of
grace and truth, that in its presence all other similitude fades away,
and we behold his “glory as of the _only_ begotten of the Father.” It is
the very spirit of Deity visible on the scale of humanity. The colours
of his mind, projected on the surface of Infinitude, form there the
all-perfect God. The mere fact of his consciousness of the alliance with
the Creator, and his tranquil announcement of it, without the slightest
inflation, and amid the exercise of the meekest sympathies, appears to
me all-persuasive. From whom else could we hear such claims without
disgust? In a moment they would turn respect into aversion, and we
should pity them as insanity, or resent them as impiety. But to him they
seem only level and natural; we hear them with assent and awe, prepared
by such a transcendent veneration as only a being truly God-like could
excite. This is one of those statements which refutes or proves itself.
Whoever, calmly affirming himself the Son and express similitude of God,
can thereby draw to him, instead of driving from him, the affections of
the wise and good, proclaims a thing self-evident; requiring, however,
to be stated, in order to be tested.

Of such _self-evidence_ as this, the gospels appear to me to be full.
Whenever men shall learn to prefer a religious to a theological
appreciation of Christ, and esteem his mind greater than his rank, much
more of this kind of internal proof will present itself. It has the
advantage of requiring no impracticable learning, and being open, on
internal study of the books, to all men of pure mind and genuine heart;
it is moral, not literary; addressing itself to the intuitions of
conscience, not to the critical faculties. It makes us disciples, on the
same principles with the first followers of Christ, who troubled
themselves about no books, and forged no chains of scholastic logic to
tie them to the faith; but watched the Prophet, beheld his deeds of
power, felt his heavenly spirit, heard his word, found it glad tidings,
and believed. In short, it is identical with the evidence to which our
Lord was so fond of appealing when he said, “No man can come to me,
except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him;”[51] “every one that is
of the truth heareth my voice;”[52] “if I do not the works of my Father,
believe me not;”[53] “my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they
follow me;”[54] “if any man will do His will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”[55] This
spiritual attraction to Christ, arising out of mere contemplation and
study of the interior of his life, is enough to bring us reverently to
his feet,—to accept him as the divinely-sent image of Deity, and the
appointed representative of God. If this be not discipleship, allow me
to ask, “_What is it?_”

I consider, then, _this internal or self-evidence_ of the New Testament,
as incomparably the most powerful that can be adduced; as securing for
Christianity an eternal seat in human nature, so as to throw ridicule on
the idea of its subversion; and as the only evidence suitable, from its
universality, to a religion intended for the majority of men, rather
than for an oligarchy of literati.

But though the divine perfection and authority of Christ may thus be
made manifest to our moral and spiritual nature, what is called the
plenary inspiration of the whole Bible is by no means a thing equally
self-evident. By the term _plenary inspiration_ is denoted the
doctrine,—That every idea which a just interpretation may discover in
the Scriptures, is infallibly true, and that even every word employed in
its expression is dictated by the unerring spirit of God; so that every
statement, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelations, must
be implicitly received, “as though from the lips of the Almighty
himself.” We are first assured that whoever denies this, shall have his
name cancelled from the Book of life; and then we are called upon to
come forward, and say plainly whether we believe it. The invitation
sounds terrible enough. Nevertheless, having a faith in God, which takes
the awe out of Church thunders, I say distinctly, this doctrine we do
not believe; and ere I have done, I hope to show that no man who can
weigh evidence, ought to believe it.

It is clear that, by no interior marks, can a book prove this sort of
inspiration to belong to itself. Accordingly, the advocates for it are
obliged to quit the intrinsic evidence, of which I have hitherto spoken,
and to seek external and foreign testimony on behalf of the Biblical
writings, and of the New Testament in the first instance. The course of
the reasoning is thus adverted to by Bishop Marsh: “The arguments which
are used,” he says, “for divine inspiration, are all founded on the
previous supposition that the Bible is _true_; for we appeal to the
contents of the Bible in proof of inspiration. Consequently, these
arguments can have no force till the authenticity and credibility of the
Bible have been already established,”[56] “Suppose,” observes the same
author, “that a professor of Divinity begins his course of lectures with
the doctrine of divine inspiration; this doctrine, however true in
itself, or however certain the arguments by which it may be established,
cannot possibly, in that stage of his enquiry, be proved to the
satisfaction of his audience; because he has not yet established other
truths, from which this must be deduced. For whether he appeals to the
promises of Christ to his Apostles, or to the declarations of the
Apostles themselves, he must take for granted that these promises and
declarations were really made; _i.e._, he must take for granted the
authenticity of the writings in which these promises and declarations
are recorded. But how is it possible that conviction should be the
consequence of postulating, instead of proving, a fact of such
importance?” “If (as is too often the case in theological works) we
undertake to prove a proposition by the aid of another which is
hereafter to be proved, the inevitable consequence is, that the
proposition in question becomes a link in the chain by which we
establish that very proposition, which at first was taken for granted.
Thus we prove premises from inferences, as well as inferences from
premises; or, in other words, we prove—nothing.”[57]

In perfect consistency with these remarks, was the lucid exposition of
the true method of theological enquiry, which I had the privilege of
hearing in Christ Church, on Wednesday last: to every word of which
(limiting it, however, to the external evidences of Christianity) I
entirely assent. It was then stated that we must

(1st.) Ascertain that the books under examination are self-consistent,
and that they contain nothing at variance with the character of God
impressed upon his works.

(2ndly.) Enquire whether the writings are really the productions of the
authors whose names they bear; or, in other words, determine their
_authenticity_.

(3dly.) Whether the writers were in circumstances to know what they
relate, and were persons of character and veracity.

(4thly.) Whether we have the works in an unmutilated state, and as they
came from the pens of the authors.

If all these researches should have an issue favourable to the writings,
the Lecturer conceives, for reasons which I think very inconclusive,
that the following inferences may be drawn:—

(1.) That the whole contents of the Bible have divine authority, because
they truly report the fulfilment of prophecy, and the performance of
miracles; and all the doctrines and lessons of a person who works
miracles must have divine authority.

(2.) That the writers were so inspired, that their writings are, in all
respects, infallibly correct; for, among the facts narrated (and which
we admit to be true), is this one; that the Holy Ghost was promised to
the Apostles, and actually descended on the disciples assembled on the
day of Pentecost, and was so extensively communicated through them to
the early church, that no New Testament writer could be without it. So
that these books are as strictly _the Word of God, as if all their
statements proceeded at once and immediately from the lips of the
Almighty himself_.

As “the Word of God” is a beautiful Scriptural phrase, which I must
refuse to give up to this most unscriptural idea, I shall replace it,
when I wish to speak of verbal inspiration, by the more appropriate
expression, the _Words_ of God. I discern in the Bible _the Word of
God_, but by no means the _Words of God_.

For the sake of brevity, I may be allowed to compress this elaborate
system of external evidence into two successive divisions; and, taking
up the first Gospel as an example, I should say, we have to enquire
respecting it,

(1.) Whether we have the words of St. Matthew. And if this be determined
in the affirmative,

(2.) Whether we have the words of God.

(1.) Our first attempt then must be, to establish the origin of these
books from Apostles or Apostolic men,—which is the sole ground for
affirming their infallibility. The method by which their origin must be
ascertained is admitted to be similar to that which would be employed in
the case of any work not sacred. It is an enquiry altogether historical
or antiquarian;—a process of literary identification. We must collect,
and dispose along an ascending chronological line, the various writers
who have quoted and mentioned the New Testament writings; call each, in
turn, into the court of criticism, to speak to the identity of the work
he cites with that which we possess; and if the series of witnesses be
complete,—if, in following into antiquity the steps of their
attestation, we find ourselves in contact with the Apostolic age, and
near the seats of Apostolic labours, we justly conclude that we have the
genuine and original productions. By the help of this foreign testimony,
almost all the books of the New Testament may be traced perhaps to the
middle of the second century; the remaining fifty or sixty years to the
death of St. John, and eighty or ninety to that of the Apostle of the
Gentiles, must be filled up by arguments showing, that this chasm is too
small for the possibilities of forgery and mistake to take effect. The
results of this process are not fit matter for detailed criticism here;
I will simply state, in general, that they yield a preponderating
probability in favour of the general reception, in the second age of the
church, of all the New Testament writings, under the names of their
reputed authors; and that it would be unreasonable to expect more
precise external evidence of authenticity than this. It is indeed much
easier to prove in this way the origin, from the founders of our
religion, of the books which we receive, than to disprove a like
authority with respect to others which we disown, or whose memory (for
many of them are lost) we dishonour. The equal antiquity of some of
these repudiated works, it is scarcely possible to deny; their inferior
authority we are obliged either to conclude from their intrinsic
character, (a reason, often abundantly satisfactory,) or to assume on
the word of a set of ecclesiastical writers, not generally distinguished
for sound judgment or tranquil passions, nor always trustworthy, even in
matters of fact; and who notoriously formed their estimate of Christian
books, less from enquiry into their genuineness, than from the supposed
orthodoxy of their contents. The Christian Fathers, on whose statement
the whole case rests, were undoubtedly guilty of that which, at all
events, with far less justice, is charged on Unitarian authors: they
threw away many a writing as spurious, because they did not like its
doctrines; testing the work by their own belief, instead of their own
belief by the work. The zone of proof which encircles the books within
the canon, and separates them from the apocryphal tribe without, appears
to me less sacred, and more faint, than it is common for theologians to
allow. And even when the selection has been made, and we have agreed to
accept the canon as it is, it is impossible, until it is shown that one
uniform inspiration produced the whole, to acknowledge the equal value
of every part. It is usual to urge the “authenticity” upon us as a kind
of technical quantity which we must take or reject, an indivisible
theological unit admitting of no variation, but that of positive or
negative. But it would surely be extraordinary, if all the twenty-seven
books of the New Testament should have precisely the same amount of
historical attestation in their favour; and it is undeniable that they
have not. The probabilities are much stronger in behalf of some books
than in that of others, though preponderant in all. There is a gradation
of evidence, arranging the writings along at least five separate steps
in the descent of proof; in effecting this division, however, let it be
clearly understood, that I refer solely to the literary question of
personal authorship, not to that of religious worth and authority; and
that, for the moment, I take into account the internal as well as
external considerations bearing upon this single point.

1. The letters of St. Paul (excepting Hebrews) occupy the highest
station of evidence.

2. The remaining letters, excepting 2nd Peter and Hebrews again, I
should place next.

3. The Gospel of St. John is more certainly authentic than the other
three; which, however, would follow in the

4th place with the book of Acts. And the list will be closed by

5. The Apocalypse, 2 Peter, and the Epistle to the Hebrews.

This arrangement might be justified, if it were necessary, in detail.
But my sole purpose in stating it now, is to convey a distinct idea of
the kind of graduated scale of proof which, from the very nature of the
enquiry, must be applied to the authenticity of the Christian records;
and to give force to the protest, which truth compels me to enter
against the indiscriminate coercion of assent attempted by theologians
in this argument. With this qualification then, we approve the general
decision of the Protestant Churches, and adopt as authentic the canon as
it stands. “Unitarians,” we repeat, “have neither canon nor version of
their own.”

“What! not the Improved Version?” I shall be asked:—that favourite
achievement of your most renowned Unitarian champions;—published by a
Unitarian society;—circulated among your laity in three simultaneous
editions; when assailed successively by Dr. Nares and Archbishop Magee,
repeatedly defended by your ablest critics in your own Journals;
containing moreover all the standard heresies of your sect; using all
your received methods of getting rid of troublesome texts; and
especially relieving you of the doctrine of the miraculous conception by
the liberal application of Jehoiakim’s pen-knife to the initial chapters
of Matthew and Luke?[58] “The shades of Belsham, Lindsey, Jebb,
Priestley, Wakefield, &c., might well be astonished to hear their
learned labours so contemptuously spoken of by” the “modern disciples of
their school.”[59]

Now it so happens, that, excepting two, all these good men were dead
before the commencement of that work. Of the two survivors, Mr. Lindsey
was disabled, by the infirmities of age, from any participation in it,
and scarcely lived to see it published.[60] The remaining divine, Mr.
Belsham, was the real editor of this translation; and alone, among
Unitarians, must have the whole honour or dishonour of the work. The
funds for the publication were doubtless furnished by a society, whose
members hoped thus to present the theologian with a valuable
contribution to Biblical literature; but had neither power nor wish to
bind themselves or others to an approval of its criticisms, or a
maintenance of its interpretations. That “all the ministers belonging to
this Society” were enrolled in the Committee for preparing the Work, is
itself a proof of the small proportion which the Association bore to the
whole body of Unitarians; and is well known to have been an inoperative
form, which had no practical effect in dividing the chief Editor’s
responsibility. The Version adopts, as a basis, the “Attempt towards
revising our English Translation of the Greek Scriptures,” by Archbishop
Newcome, Primate of Ireland; from which, including the smallest verbal
variations, there are not, on an average, more than two deviations in a
page; and it is a principle with the Editors, that these departures
shall be noticed in the margin; so that any one, having the Improved
Version in his hand, has the Archbishop’s Revision also before him. How
far this translation has authority with Unitarians, may perhaps be
judged of from one fact. The clergymen who are holding up this work to
the pious horror of their hearers are repeating charges against it, long
ago preferred by Archbishop Magee; who, in his time, reproduced them
from Dr. Nares, the Regius Professor of modern history in the University
of Oxford; who, again, borrowed no small part of his materials from a
Review of the Version, in the Monthly Repository for 1809, by Dr.
Carpenter, a distinguished Unitarian Divine. I do not mean that there
was nothing but reproduction of the original Reviewer’s materials
throughout all these steps; if it were so, I should be ashamed to call
that venerable man my friend: fresh objections were added at every
stage; and, by Archbishop Magee, a mass of abuse the most coarse, and
misrepresentation the most black; repeated still by unsuspecting and
unlearned admirers, who find it easier to acquire from him his aptitudes
for calumny than his acuteness in criticism. But the principal
objections to the Improved Version were certainly anticipated by Dr.
Carpenter, who furnished a list of unacknowledged deviations from
Newcome’s revision, and from Griesbach’s and the Received Texts;—who
censured the whole system of departure from that text, which seemed to
be adopted as a standard; the license allowed to conjectural emendation;
the preference of Newcome’s to the authorized version as a basis; the
introduction of any doctrinal notes; and, what is especially to our
present purpose, who vindicated, from the suspicion of spuriousness, the
initial chapters of St. Luke’s Gospel, and consented to part with those
of St. Matthew’s, only because at variance with the authority of the
third Evangelist. From the armoury, therefore, of our own church, are
stolen the very weapons, wherewith now, amid taunts of sacerdotal
derision, we are to be driven as intruders from the fair fields of
learning. For myself, when the learned labours of Dissenters are
ridiculed, and the “defective scholarship” of heretics affirmed, by the
privileged clergy of the established church, I always think of the
Universities,—those venerable seats of instruction, from which
Nonconformists must be excluded. The precious food of knowledge is first
locked up; the key is hung beyond our reach; and then the starvelings
must be laughed at, when they sink and fall. But so is it always with
unjust power; the habit of injury begets the propensity to scorn.[61]

But we are called upon to say, whether we really mean to repudiate the
Improved Version. If by “repudiate” be meant, confess the truth of all
the accusations brought against it, or reject it from our libraries as
unworthy of consultation, we do not repudiate it. But we do refuse to be
held responsible, directly or indirectly, for any portion of its
criticisms; with which we have no more concern, than have our Reverend
assailants with the Translation of Luther or the Institutes of Calvin.
If we are pressed with the personal inquiry, “but, what portion of its
peculiarities, especially in relation to the narrative of the miraculous
conception, do you as a matter of fact, approve?” I can answer for no
one but myself, for we have no theological standards, nor any
restriction on the exercise of private judgment, on such subjects. But,
individually, I have no objection to state, that I consider Mr. Belsham
as having brought over the threshold of his conversion so much of his
original orthodoxy, that, like all who insist upon finding a uniform
doctrinal system prevading the various records of Christianity, he is
justly open to the charge of having accommodated both his criticism and
his interpretations to his belief; that his objections to the
authenticity of both accounts of the miraculous conception, appear to me
altogether inconclusive; that I therefore leave these histories as
integral parts of the gospels they introduce.[62] Whether I receive all
their statements as unerringly true, is a question altogether different;
nor can the Lecturer who calls on us to satisfy him on this point, link
together in one query our reception of these chapters as _authentic_ and
as _true_, without falling into Mr. Belsham’s own error of mixing these
two things so obviously distinct. It no more follows, because these
chapters are Matthew’s, that they must be reconcilable with Luke, and
so, free from objection to their truth; than, because they are
inconsistent with Luke, therefore they cannot be Matthew’s. This part of
the enquiry belongs to the second portion of our discussion respecting
the New Testament; whether, granting that we have the veritable words of
the reputed authors, we have, in consequence, the _ipsissima verba_ of
God. To this topic let us now proceed.

(2.) The advocate of plenary inspiration, having obtained our assent to
the authenticity of the Christian Scriptures, proceeds to show their
truth. He reminds us that the depositions are no longer anonymous; and
that, the testimony having been duly signed, we may examine the
character of the witnesses. We call them therefore before us. They are
plain, plebeian, hard-handed men of toil, who have laboured in the
fields and olive-grounds of Judæa, or held an oar on the Galilean Lake;
who nevertheless have been not without the cottage and the home, the
parent, wife and child; belonging, moreover, to a country having
something to remember, and more to expect. Addressed by a solitary and
houseless wanderer from Nazareth, won by some undefinable attraction
that makes them think him a man of God, they follow him awhile, hoping
for promotion, if he should prove, as they suspect, to be some great
one. Daily this hope declines, but hourly the love increases. They hang
upon his words; their passions sink abashed before his look; they
blindly follow his steps, knowing nothing but that they will be the
steps of mercy; they rebuke the blind beggar who cries; but he calls him
groping to him, and sends him dazzled away; they go to help the cripple,
and ere they reach him, at a word he leaps up in strength; they fly at
the shriek of the maniac from the tombs, when lo! he lapses into
silence, and sits at the feet of the Nazarene in the tears of a right
and grateful mind. How can they leave him? yet why precisely do they
stay? If they depart, it is but to return with joy; and so they linger
still, for they learn to trust him better than themselves. They go with
him sorrowing; with occasional flashes of brilliant ambition, but with
longer darkness between; with lowering hopes, but deepening love; to the
farewell meal; to the moonlit garden, its anguished solitude, its
tranquil surrender to the multitude, making the seeming captive the real
conqueror; a few of them to the trial; one, to the cross; the women,
even to the sepulchre; and all, agitated and unbelieving, were recalled
in breathless haste from their despair by the third day’s tidings, the
Lord has risen indeed! Thenceforth, they too are risen from the dead;
the bandages, as of the grave, drop from their souls; the spirit of God,
which is the spirit of truth, comes to loose them and let go. Not higher
did the Lord ascend to the heaven which holds him now, than did they
rise above the level of their former life. They understand it all, and
can proclaim it; the things that were to come,—that dreadful cross, that
third day, so darkly hidden from their eyes,—are shown them now; a
thousand things which he had said unto them, rush, by the help of this
new spirit, to their remembrance. And forth they go, to tell the things
which they have seen and heard. They most of them perished, not without
joy, in the attempt; but they _did_ tell them, with a voice that could
summon nations and ages to the audience; which things are this day
sounded in our ears.

But I suppose we must endeavour to speak coolly of these venerable men,
if we are to save them from being deprived of their manhood, and turned
into the petrified images and empty vessels of a physical or
intellectual inspiration. Why will the extravagance of Churches compel
us to freeze down our religion into logic, to prevent it blazing into an
unsocial fanaticism? If, however, we must weigh the Apostles’ claims
with nice precision, we must say (at this stage of our enquiry we can
say only) that they were honest personal witnesses of visible and
audible facts; deserving therefore of all the reliance to which
veracity, severely tested, is entitled. To everything then which comes
under the description of _personal testimony_, their demand on our
confidence extends; their own impressions we believe to have been as
they record. But their inferences, their arguments, their
interpretations of ancient writings, their speculations on future
events, however just and perfect in themselves, are no part of the
_report which they give in evidence_, and cannot be established by
appeal to their integrity.

Nor, in this limitation of testimony to its proper province, is there
anything in the slightest degree dishonourable to these “chosen
witnesses.” “Is the judgment of the writers of the New Testament,” says
Archdeacon Paley, “in interpreting passages of the Old, or, sometimes
perhaps in receiving established interpretations, so connected either
with their veracity, or with their means of information concerning what
was passing in their own times, as that a critical mistake, even were it
clearly made out, should overthrow their historical credit? Does it
diminish it? Has it any thing to do with it?” “We do not usually
question the credit of a writer, by reason of an opinion he may have
delivered upon subjects unconnected with his evidence; and even upon
subjects connected with his account, or mixed with it in the same
discourse or writing, we naturally separate facts from opinions,
testimony from observation, narrative from argument.”[63] Moreover, our
dependence upon a faithful witness, besides being restricted to matters
of fact, is measured by his _opportunities_ of observation; and it would
be absurd to insist on his being heard with precisely equal belief,
whether he relates, to the best of his knowledge, that which happened
before he was born, or tells an occurrence that passed under his eyes.
If this distinction be not well founded, then has personal contact with
events no advantage; the stranger is on a footing with the observer; and
all the defensive reasonings which theologians have thrown round
Christianity, from the station which the Apostles occupied as
eye-witnesses, are destitute of meaning; supported though they are by
the sanction of the Apostles themselves, whose constant claim to belief,
when they preached, was this only, “and we are witnesses of these
things.” And if this distinction be well founded, there is just ground
for discriminating between the different parts of an historian’s
narrative, and giving the highest place of credit to that which he had
the best means of knowing; nor is it possible to admit the rule which I
heard laid down on Wednesday evening, that if we discover in an
Evangelist a single incorrect statement, the whole book must be
repudiated,—selection being wholly out of the question. Of the birth of
Christ, for example, St. Matthew was not a witness; of his ministry he
was; and has the report of the latter no higher claim upon belief than
the history of the former,—seen as it was only in retrospect, at the
distance of from thirty to sixty years, and through the colours of a
subsequent life so great, so marvellous, so solemn? Hence, with relation
to the initial chapters of the first and third Evangelists, while I
leave them on an equality with the rest of the Gospels, in respect of
authenticity, I place them in an inferior rank of credibility;
especially since I find it impossible to reconcile them with each other.
To justify this opinion, I will point out two inconsistencies between
them, one chronological, the other geographical. I heard it affirmed on
Wednesday evening, that the former of these difficulties was only
apparent, and arose from the mistaken calculation of our Christian era,
the commencement of whose year, 1, does not really strike, as it ought,
the hour of the nativity. Well, then, we will throw this era aside for
the moment, and employ another mode of reckoning, prevalent among the
historians of those times, dating from the building of Rome. St. Luke
tells us that in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, our Lord was about
thirty years of age; this would assign the birth of Christ, at the
earliest, to Jan. 1 of the year of Rome 751. According to St. Matthew,
he was born full one year before the death of King Herod, whose massacre
of the innocents included all under two years; the latest date that can
be fixed for the death of Herod is Feb. or March 751, so that the
nativity falls, according to one Evangelist not later than 750,
according to the other not earlier than 751.[64] The geographical
discrepancy between the two Evangelists has reference to the habitual
residence of the Virgin Mary; St. Matthew supposes Bethlehem to have
been Joseph’s usual dwelling place; and “nothing can be more evident
than that, according to the account of St. Luke, Joseph was a total
stranger at Bethlehem.” I quote the opinion of the Rev. Connop
Thirlwall, a divine whose distinguished philological attainments have
given him a European reputation, without at present raising him to that
station in his own church, which would best suit his merits and her
dignity.[65]

The variance between two narratives is no sufficient reason for
rejecting both, though it compels the disbelief of one. In the present
instance, the probabilities appear to preponderate in favour of St.
Luke’s. And, returning from the particular case to the general rule, I
conclude this topic by repeating, respecting the “_credibility_” of any
set of historical works, the remark formerly made respecting their
“_authenticity_.” I protest against its being urged upon us as an
indissoluble magnitude, without fractional parts, incapable of increment
or decrement, analysis or composition, which must be taken whole, or
rejected whole; and I claim the right, till it can be shown not to
belong to me, of reducing the recorded events of Scripture into classes,
according to their decree of probability and their force of testimony.
With this qualification, we maintain, with all other Christians, the
ample credibility and the actual truth of the Gospel records, making no
divorce between the natural and the miraculous, but taking both as
inseparably woven together into the texture of the same faithful
narrative.

But this step in the argument, I am reminded, cannot be taken without
another, which brings us directly to the intellectual infallibility of
the Apostles. Among the primary and undisputed facts which they record
from personal experience, are the miracles which they wrought; and
miracles, being an interposition of God, establish the divine authority
of the performer; so that all the lessons and sentiments propounded by a
person so endowed, must be received as immediate communications from the
Unerring Spirit.

To this argument, if somewhat limited in the extent of its conclusion, I
believe that most Unitarians would yield their assent. Certain it is
that their best writers constantly reason from the miraculous acts, to
the doctrinal inspiration of the first preachers of Christianity; and
Dr. Priestley calls it “egregious trifling”[66] to question the
soundness of the proof. Yet it is surely difficult to reconcile it with
fact and Scripture; and not less so to state it logically in words. In
whatever form it is expressed, it rests upon a postulate which I hold to
be false and irreligious; viz., that the supernatural is Divine, the
natural not Divine; that God did the miracles, and since the creation
has done nothing else; that Heaven gave a mission to those whom it thus
endowed, and has given no mission to those who are otherwise endowed.
All peculiar _consecration_ of miracle is obtained by a precisely
proportioned _desecration_ of nature; it is out of a supposed contrast
between the two, that the whole force of the impression arises. The
imagination which overlooks and forgets all that is sacred in the common
earth and sky, that gives itself over to the dream, that all is dead
mechanism,—downright clock-work, wound up, perhaps at creation, but
running down of itself till doom; the heart that feels nothing divine in
life, and nothing holy in man; that has lost, from Epicurean sloth and
sickness of soul, the healthy faculty of spontaneous wonder, and worship
ever fresh,—are the pupils most ripe for this tutelage. The Deity must
be thrust from the universe, or else benumbed there, in order to
concentrate his energies in the preternatural. The speculative convert
to miracles, is the practical Atheist of nature.

I need not remind any reader of the Gospels, of the accordance of this
view with the general temper of our Lord’s mind. His miracles, surely,
sprung from compassionate, not proselytizing impulses; had a practical,
not a didactic air; were not formally wrought as preliminaries to a
discourse, but spontaneously issued from the quietude of pity; they were
not syllogisms, but mercies. Nay, where conviction was most needed, what
is said of him? “He did not many mighty works there, _because of their
unbelief_;”[67] unless he wished them to continue in unbelief, he must
have regarded miracles as an improper instrument of overcoming it. And
can we forget his language of rebuke, “except ye see signs and wonders,
ye will not believe,”[68] When he appeals to his “_works_,” it is to his
“_many good works_;”[69] to the benevolence of his acts, not their
marvellousness chiefly, to their being “the works of his Father,”[70]
conceived in the spirit of God, and bearing the impress of his
character.

This estimate of the logical force of miracles (the moral power of those
which belong to Christianity is incalculable) appears to be consonant
with experience. I conceive that, _in fact_, unbelievers are very seldom
convinced by the appeal to the supernatural; that the avenues of
admission to Christianity lie usually in quite a different direction;
and that the reason and affections surrender to Christ’s spirit, and
thus comprehend the thing signified, before they can receive and
interpret “_the sign_.” Nay, let me put the case home to your own
experience. Would you, by this instrumentality, become convinced of that
which you before held false? If, before your eyes, a person were to
multiply five loaves into five hundred, and then say, “this is to prove
the doctrines which I teach, that God is malignant, and that there is no
heaven after death,”—should you be converted, and follow him as his
disciple? Certainly not; the statement being incredible, the miracle
would be powerless. And the inference I would draw is this: that the
primitive force of persuasion lies in the moral doctrine as estimated by
our reason and conscience, not in the preternatural act displayed before
our senses; for, the moment you test their forces, by bringing them into
collision, the original convictions of the reason obtain the mastery. It
is no answer to say, that such a case is of impossible occurrence. For
the purpose to which I apply it, viz., to try an experiment with our own
minds, respecting the real argumentative capabilities of miracles, an
imaginary case is not only as good as an actual one, but a great deal
better: for so long as a good truth and a good miracle are linked
together, and move in the same direction, we rest confusedly in the
joint support of physical and moral evidence, and are unable to
determine which is the ascendant power.

The statements and examples of Scripture tend to the same conclusion.
The personal disciples of our Lord returned from a mission on which he
had sent them; exclaiming, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us
through thy name,”[71] Yet, though they were possessed of these
miraculous powers, their views of the very kingdom which they had gone
forth to preach were at this time exceedingly narrow and
erroneous,—leading them into acts and desires ambitious, passionate, and
false.

Miracles, then, are simply awakening facts: demanding and securing
reverential and watchful regard to something, or to everything, in the
persons performing them; but not specifically singling out any portion
of their doctrinal ideas, and affording them infallible proof. Is it not
competent to God thus to draw human attention to a _person_, as well as
a truth;—to a _character_, as well as a doctrine? At all events, it is
an unwarrantable presumption in us to select for the All-wise the
particular motive with which exclusively he ought to create a miracle;
instead of humbly noting the actual results, and judging thence of his
divine purposes.

But, it will now be urged, whatever sentiments may be entertained
respecting the proper inference from miracles in general, there is one
in particular which directly establishes the plenary inspiration of the
apostles and first disciples. It is recorded in the book of Acts, that
on the day of Pentecost, when they were with one accord in one place,
the Holy Ghost descended upon all.[72] The two Evangelists, St. Matthew
and St. John, were present; so were St. Peter and St. James; for all
these were Apostles. And we know that, by the laying on of the hands of
the Apostles, the same power passed into all disciples on whom they
might choose to confer the privilege. We cannot suppose any of the New
Testament authors to have been excluded from this class; and must
therefore believe, that every word of the Christian canon was composed
under the influence of the Unerring Spirit. This argument is proposed in
the following words, by Dr. Tattershall, in his published sermon on the
“Nature and Extent of the Right of Private Judgment.”

“The Scriptures have been already proved” ... “to be a true and
authentic history; one of the principal facts of which history is, the
outpouring of the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ.
I take, therefore, as an example, the Gospel of St. Matthew, and reason
as follows:—I learn, from the history, that Christ’s disciples were
inspired by the Holy Ghost; among this number was St. Matthew; therefore
St. Matthew was inspired; and, consequently, that which he wrote, under
this influence of inspiration, is to be regarded as the Word of God.
Whereas, on the other hand, if St. Matthew was not inspired, the history
relates that which is not true, and the credibility of the whole sacred
history is at once destroyed: and, with it, both the Church, and also
Christianity itself, must fall to the ground.”[73]

Now to convey, at the outset, a distinct idea of the reason why this
argument does not convince me, let me say, that I believe St. Matthew to
have been inspired; but I do not believe him to have been infallible. I
am sure that he nowhere puts forth any such claim: and if he does not
affirm it himself, I know not who can affirm it for him. Indeed, to the
advocates of this doctrine it must seem strange, that even St. John the
Divine, instead of bearing down all doubt by this overwhelming claim,
should so modestly and carefully conciliate the belief of his readers,
by appealing to his own human opportunities of information: “and _he
that saw it_ bare record, and his record is true:”[74] “this is the
disciple _that testifieth_ of these things, and wrote these things:”[75]
and that St. Luke should content himself with saying, at the
commencement of his Gospel, that its materials were furnished by those
who “from the beginning were eye-witnesses.”[76]

Everything in this argument clearly depends on the meaning which we are
to attach to the phrases “Holy Ghost,”—“Inspiration,”—“Spirit of
God,”—and other forms of expression employed to denote this peculiar
influence. What, according to the Scriptures, were the _appropriate
functions_ of this Divine Agent? and are we to include among them an
exemption of those on whom its power fell from all possibilities of
error, in narration, in reasoning, in expectation, in speculative and
practical doctrine? In short, do the sacred writers represent this Holy
Spirit as conferring intellectual infallibility?

Now the original account of the descent of the Holy Spirit certainly
implies nothing of the kind.[77] The _gift of tongues_, which St. Paul,
though possessed of it in the highest degree,[78] places in the lowest
rank of spiritual gifts,[79] and which he expressly discriminates from
“the word of wisdom,” and “the word of knowledge,”[80] is the only
preternatural effect there ascribed to this new influence. Other
passages descriptive of this agency equally fall short of this claim of
infallibility. We read, for example,[81] that by the direction of the
Apostles, seven persons were to be selected from the general body of
believers, who were to be men “full of the Holy Ghost, _and
wisdom_,”—the two attributes being distinguished. It must be supposed,
too, that the qualifications demanded of these officers had some
proportionate reference to the duties assigned. These duties were simply
the management of the society’s financial accounts, and the distribution
of its eleemosynary funds. When it is said that John the Baptist should
“be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb,”[82] are we
to understand, that from earliest infancy he was infallible?—he who, in
the very midst of his ministry, sent to Jesus for information on this
question, “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for
another?”[83]—a question, be it observed, which implies doubt on the
great subject-matter of the Baptist’s whole mission. Perhaps, however,
it will be admitted that there are inferior degrees of this inspiration;
so that passages like this may be found, in which the phrases denoting
it are used in a lower sense. But, it will be said, in its highest
intensity it cannot be so restricted, and is even distinctly affirmed to
involve infallibility. The operations of the spirit of God are
distributed by theologians into two classes,—the extraordinary,
experienced by the apostles, and exempting them from liability to
error,—the ordinary, which are assured to all true disciples, and whose
office implies no further illumination of the understanding, than is
needful for the sanctification of the heart. Now if this statement and
division be really true and scriptural, we shall doubtless find Christ
and his Apostles separating their promises of divine influence into two
corresponding sets; keeping things so different, clear of all confusion;
and fully as exact in this “discerning of spirits,” as their modern
disciples. But so far is this from being the case, that between the
_greater spirit_ of the twelve apostles, and the _less spirit_ of the
general church, no distinction whatever is drawn; nor any between the
_intellectual infallibility_ which was to await the apostles, and the
_spiritual sanctification_ promised to the faithful multitude of all
ages. Nay, it so happens, that the most unlimited expressions relating
to the subject occur in such connections, that they cannot be confined
to the apostles, but obviously apply to all private Christians. For
instance, shall we say that our Lord’s promise of the “Comforter, which
is the Holy Ghost,” explained by the remarkable synonym which he
appended, “_the spirit of truth_” which should “_teach them all
things_,” and “_lead them into all truth_”—implies universal
illumination of the understanding? Close at hand is a clause forbidding
the interpretation, by spreading the promise over all ages of the
church; “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter,
_that he may abide with you for ever, even the spirit of truth_;”[84]
and the expression is accordingly quoted by Dr. Wardlaw, as descriptive
of the common operations of the spirit.[85] Again, St. John in his first
_General Epistle_ (addressed of course to the whole church) says, “Ye
have an unction from the Holy One, and _ye know all things_.”[86] Take
then the strongest and most unqualified expressions on this subject, and
if they prove the infallibility of the apostles, they prove the same of
all private Christians. Or, take those which show sanctification to be
the characteristic office of the Holy Spirit with respect to the general
church, and you show that this also was its agency on the Apostles.

One or two texts are occasionally adduced in defence of this doctrine;
their paucity and inapplicability show how slight is the scripture
foundation on which it rests. By far the most remarkable of these is
found in 2 Tim. iii. 16. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction in righteousness.” Now observe,

1. That the verb _is_, which constitutes the whole affirmation here, has
nothing corresponding to it in the Greek, and is put in by the English
translators. Of course the sentence requires a verb _somewhere_, but the
place of its insertion depends on the discretion of the translator.
Baxter, Grotius, and other critics, accordingly render the passage thus:
“All scripture, given by inspiration of God, is also profitable,” &c.
The Apostle has already been reminding Timothy of the importance of
those scriptures with which he had been acquainted from his youth, to
his _personal faith_: and he now adds, that they are _also_ useful for
his _public teaching_. He therefore simply says that whatever scriptures
are given by inspiration of God, are thus profitable.

2. Since Paul first speaks generally of those scriptures with which
Timothy had been familiar from his youth, and then proceeds to select
from these a certain class, as given by inspiration of God, his
description extends to no portion of the New Testament, and only to some
writings of the Old. The purpose for which he recommends them, indicates
what books were in his thoughts. As they were to aid Timothy in his
public duty of convincing his countrymen that Jesus was the Messiah, he
refers to those books which had sustained the expectation of a
Messiah,—the Jewish Prophets. “The whole extent of his doctrine, I
conceive to have been expressed by the Apostle Peter thus: ‘prophecy
came not in old time by the will of men; but holy men of God spake,
moved by the Holy Spirit;’[87]—that those also who recorded these
_speeches_, _wrote_ by the Holy Spirit; that, in addition to the
superhuman message, there was a superhuman report of it, is a notion
which no trace can be found in the apostolic writings. The whole amount,
therefore, of the Apostle’s doctrine is this; that the prophets had a
preternatural knowledge of future events; and that their communications
were recorded in the prophetic books. By the admission of these points,
the theory of _inspired composition_ obviously gains nothing.”[88]

No appeal can be more unfortunate for the advocate of plenary
inspiration, than to the writings of the great apostle of the Gentiles.
Not a trace can be found in them of the cold, oracular dignity,—the
bold, authoritative enunciation,—the transcendental exposition, equally
above argument and passion, in which conscious and confessed
infallibility would deliver its decisions. All the natural faculties of
the man are shed forth, with most vehement precipitation, on every page.
He pleads with his disciples, as if kneeling at their feet. He
withstands Peter to the face,—though no less inspired than
himself,—because he was to be blamed for unsound sentiments and
inconsistent conduct. He hurries so eagerly, and sinks so deep into an
illustration, that scarcely can he make a timely retreat. He too quickly
seizes an analogy to apply it with exactitude and precision. And above
all, he is incessantly engaged in _reasoning_: and by that very act, he
selects as his own the common human level of address,—generously submits
his statements to the verdict of our judgment, and leaves that judgment
free to accept or to reject them. Nor is it on mere subordinate points
that he contents himself with this method, which, by challenging search,
abandons infallibility. The great controversies of the infant church,
which involved the whole future character of Christianity, which decided
how far it should conciliate Polytheism, and how much preserve of
Judaism, the apostle of the Gentiles boldly confides to reasoning: and
his writings are composed chiefly of _arguments_, protective of the
Gospel from compromise with Idolatry on the one hand, and slavery to the
Law on the other.

Nor is this denied by any instructed divine of any church. In insisting
“upon the duty of professed Christians to abstain from all compliance
with the idolatrous practices of the heathens around them,” says Dr.
Tattershall, “St. Paul, even though an inspired Apostle, does not
proceed upon the mere dictum of authority, but appeals to the _reason_
of those to whom he writes; and calls upon them to reflect upon the
inconsistency of such conduct, with the nature of their Christian
profession. In fact, he produces _arguments_, and desires them to weigh
the reasons which he assigns, and see whether they do not fully sustain
the conclusion which he draws from them. ‘I speak,’ says he, ‘as to
_wise_ men, JUDGE YE what I say.’”[89]

If then the Apostle wrote his letters under inspiration, have we not
here direct authority to sit in judgment on the productions of
inspiration, or _the contents of the word of God_; not merely to learn
what is said, but to consider its inherent reasonableness and truth? No
one, indeed, can state more forcibly than Dr. Tattershall himself the
principle, of which this conclusion is only a particular case. “When I
reason with an opponent,” says he, “I do _not_ invade his acknowledged
right of private judgment, nor do I require of him to surrender that
judgment to me. I am, in fact, doing the precise _contrary_ of this. I
am, _by the very act of reasoning_, both _acknowledging_ his right of
judgment, and making an _appeal_ to it.”[90]

To acknowledge the right of judgment, is to forego the claim of
infallibility, and to concede the privilege of dissent; and thus frankly
does St. Paul deal with me. Vainly do his modern expounders attempt to
make him the instrument of their own assumptions. To appeal to my
reason, and then, if I cannot see the force of the proof, to hold me up
as a blasphemer and a rebel against the word of God, is an
inconsistency, of which only the degenerate followers of the great
Apostle could be guilty. His writings disown, in every page, the
injurious claims which would confer on them an artificial authority, to
the ruin of their true power and beauty. In order to show the absolute
divine truth of all that may be written by an inspired man, it is not
enough to establish the _presence_ of inspiration, you must prove also
the _absence_ of everything else. And this can never be done with any
writings made up, like the Apostle’s, of a scarce-broken tissue of
argument and illustration. It is clear that he was not forbidden to
reason and expound, to speculate and refute, to seek access, by every
method of persuasion, to the minds he was sent to evangelize; to appeal,
at one time to his interpretation of prophecy, at another to the visible
glories of creation, and again to the analogies of history. Where could
have been his zeal, his freshness, his versatility of address, his
self-abandonment, his various success, if his natural faculties had not
been left to unembarassed action? And the moment you allow free action
to his intelligence and conscience, you inevitably admit the
possibilities of error, which are inseparable from the operations of the
human mind. To grant that Paul reasons, and be startled at the idea that
he may reason incorrectly,—to admit that he speculates, and yet be
shocked at the surmise that he may speculate falsely,—to praise his
skill in illustration, yet shrink in horror when something less apposite
is pointed out, is an obvious inconsistency. The human understanding
cannot perform its functions without taking its share of the chances of
error; nor can a critic of its productions have any perception of their
truth and excellence, without conceding the possibility of fallacies and
faults. We must give up our admiration of the Apostles as men, if we are
to listen to them always as oracles of God.

But I must proceed to my last argument, which is a plain one, founded
upon facts, open to every one who can read his Bible. I state it in the
words of Mr. Thirlwall: “the discrepancies found in the Gospels compel
us to admit that the superintending control of the Spirit was not
exerted to exempt the sacred writings altogether from errors and
inadvertencies;”[91] nay, he speaks of “the more rigid theory of
inspiration” having been so long “abandoned by the learned on account of
the insuperable difficulties opposed to it by the discrepancies found in
the Gospels, that it would now be a waste of time to attack it.”[92]

I heard it affirmed on Wednesday evening, that, in the sacred writings,
no case can possibly occur of self-contradiction or erroneous statement;
that the very idea of inspiration is utterly opposed to all supposition
of the presence of error; that the occurrence of such a blemish would
prove, that the writer was not so under the immediate teaching and
superintendence of Almighty God as to be preserved from error; or, in
other words, that he was not inspired; that the erroneous passage must
indeed be rejected, but, with it, the whole work in which it is found,
as destitute of divine authority. I have brought Mr. Thirlwall to
confront the question of fact; let me quote Dr. Paley in relation to
this statement of principle. “I know not,” he says, “a more rash or
unphilosophical conduct of the understanding, than to reject the
substance of a story, by reason of some diversities in the circumstances
with which it is related. The usual character of _human testimony_ (Dr.
Paley is discussing the discrepancies between the several Gospels), is,
substantial truth under circumstantial variety.” “On the contrary, a
close and minute agreement induces the suspicion of confederacy and
fraud.”[93] If both these statements be true, the phenomena of
inspiration would be identical with those of confederacy and fraud. I
estimate the Scriptures far too highly to hesitate, for a moment, about
pointing out to your notice certain small variations and
inconsistencies, utterly destructive of the doctrine of plenary
inspiration; but absolutely confirmatory, in some instances, of the
veracity of the historians, and, in all, compatible with it. Our faith
scorns the insinuation, that these sacred writings require “any
forbearance from the boasted understanding of man.”

1. The different Evangelists are at variance with each other, with
respect to the calling of the first Apostles. They differ with respect
to the _time_, the _place_, the _order_; e.g.:

First, as to _time_; Matthew[94] represents the imprisonment of John the
Baptist as the occasion of our Lord’s beginning to preach, and as
preceding the call of any Apostles.

John[95] represents Andrew and Simon, Philip and Nathanael, as
called,—the miracle at Cana as wrought, a Passover as attended at
Jerusalem,—a residence of Jesus and his disciples in the rural district
of Judæa, as going on; and then adds, “for John was not yet cast into
prison.”

Next, as to _place_; according to Matthew and Mark,[96] Andrew and Peter
are called by the Lake of Galilee; according to John, in Judæa.

And as to _order_; Matthew and Mark represent the two pairs of brothers,
as _successively_ called: first, Andrew and Peter; then, after a short
interval, James and John.

Luke,[97] making no mention of Andrew, represents the others as
simultaneously called.

John represents Andrew as called with himself; and Peter, as
subsequently called, through the instrumentality of his brother Andrew.
Of James (though affirmed by the other Evangelists to have been his own
companion in the call), he is silent.

The three first writers not being present, it is nothing wonderful that
they are less accurate than the fourth, who was.

2. The three denials of Peter, as recorded by the first, third, and
fourth Evangelists, will be found inconsistent in their minute
circumstances. The denials are uttered,

{ 1. to a maid.
according to Matthew,[98] { 2. to another maid.
{ 3. to those who stood by.

{ 1. to a maid.
according to Luke,[99] { 2. to a man.
{ 3. to another man.

{ 1. to the maid who admitted him.
according to John,[100] { 2. to the officers of the palace.
{ 3. to a man (a relation of Malchus).

3. Matthew[101] and Luke[102] state, that one Simon bore our Lord’s
cross to Calvary; John,[103] that Jesus bore it himself.

4. The inscription annexed by Pilate to the cross is given differently
by every one of the Evangelists.

Matthew:[104] “This is Jesus the king of the Jews.”
Mark:[105] “The king of the Jews.”
Luke:[106] “This is the king of the Jews.”
John:[107] “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.”

5. Matthew[108] and Mark[109]; state that our Lord on the cross was
reviled by both the malefactors; but Luke[110] affirms that when one of
them was guilty of this shocking mockery, he was rebuked by the other;
and that the latter received the well-known assurance, “this day shalt
thou be with me in Paradise.”

6. The last discrepancy which I shall mention, has reference to the
final Passover, and its relation to the day of crucifixion. But in order
to understand the case, and indeed to read with intelligence the whole
series of events connected with the crucifixion and resurrection, it is
necessary to bear in mind the following facts:—

(a.) That the Jewish day commenced in the evening, and was reckoned from
sunset to sunset.

(b.) That the Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, and
extended from six o’clock on Friday evening, to the same time on
Saturday.

(c.) That at the Passover, the paschal lamb was slain at the end of one
Jewish day, and eaten immediately, _i.e._, at the commencement of the
next, or about six or seven in the evening. The three hours before
sunset, during which it was prepared, were called _preparation of the
Passover_, and belonged to the fourteenth of the month; while the hours
after sunset, during which it was eaten, belonged to the fifteenth. The
phrase, _preparation of the Sabbath_, was used in like manner, to denote
the three hours before sunset every Friday.

(d.) The Passover being fixed to the fifteenth of the _month_, and
_that_ a lunar month, necessarily moved over all the days of the week;
and might fall, of course, into coincidence with the weekly Sabbath.

(e.) The feast of unleavened bread was a festival of seven days’
duration, the first day of which coincided with that on which the
Passover was eaten, following of course that on which it was killed.

These things being premised, we are prepared to notice the points on
which the Evangelists agree, and those in which they disagree, in their
accounts of the crucifixion, and its connected events. They all agree in
assigning the same distinguishing incidents of our Lord’s personal
history to the _four great days of the week_ most interesting to
Christians, viz., to the Thursday the last supper; to the Friday, the
crucifixion; to the Saturday, the sleep in the sepulchre; to the Sunday,
the resurrection. But about the position of the Jewish Passover upon
these days, they singularly differ; St. John fixing it on the Friday
evening, and making it therefore coincide with the weekly Sabbath; the
other three fixing it on the Thursday evening, and so following it up by
the Sabbath. The variance is the more interesting from its influence on
our views of the last supper; which, according to the three first
Evangelists _was the Passover_, according to the fourth, was _not the
Passover_. The institution of the Communion, as a Christian
transformation of the Jewish Festival rests entirely on the former of
these narratives; St. John is altogether silent respecting it. Yet it
was he who leaned on Jesus’ bosom, and stood beneath his cross.

Now what is the just inference from such discrepancies? Is it that the
writers were incompetent reporters of the main facts? Not so; for there
are few biographers, however well-informed, whose testimony, produced in
circumstances at all parallel, would not yield, on the application of as
severe a test, inconsistencies more considerable. Is it that they are
not veracious? Not so; for not a trace of self-interest is discernible
in these cases. Is it that they were not inspired? Not so; for the
transition they underwent from peasants to apostles, from dragging the
lake to regenerating the world, is the sublimest case of inspiration
(except one) with which God has refreshed the nations. But it is this;
that they were not intellectually infallible.

I have now endeavoured to give some idea of two different ways of
regarding the Christian records.

I. They possess an _internal and self-evidence_, in their own moral
beauty and consistency, and the unimaginable perfection of the great Son
of God, whom they bring to life before us. With this evidence, which is
open to every pure mind and true heart,—which speaks to the conscience
like a voice of God without, conversing with the spirit of God within,
all those may be content, who think that, _to accept Christ as the image
of Deity, and the authoritative model of Duty_, is to be _a Christian_.

II. Those, however, who think that, in order to be Christians, we must
hold one only doctrinal creed, containing many things hard to
understand, and harder to believe, are aware that nothing short of a
divine infallibility can prevail with us to receive a system so
repugnant to our nature. And as this is incapable of self-proof, they
appeal chiefly to the _external evidence and foreign attestation_ which
belong to the Christian records; beginning with the historical method,
they endeavour to show,

(1.) That we have the original words of the Gospel witnesses
(_authenticity_):

(2.) That, this being the case, we have the very Words of God (_plenary
inspiration_).

Now let me detain you by one reflection on these two methods. Suppose
each, in turn, to prove insufficient, as a basis of Christianity, the
other remaining firm; and consider what consequences will result.

If the internal or self-evidence be inadequate, (which our objectors
must suppose, for it cannot, they admit, prove their creeds,) then every
one must seek a foundation for his faith in the other. He must satisfy
himself, _in limine_, of the personal authorship of the books in the
Canon; a purely literary inquiry, and one of extraordinary labour, even
to those who enjoy every advantage for its prosecution. In order to be
saved, doctrines must be embraced, requiring for their proof an
inspiration, which does not exist in the New Testament writings, except
on the supposition of their _apostolic origin_. The ascertainment, then,
of _this_ point, is the necessary prelude to all saving faith; this duty
lies on the outermost threshold of our acceptance with the Giver of
salvation. So that God hangs the eternal welfare of every man on an
investigation so critical and elaborate, that a whole life of research
is not too much to understand it, and the most familiar with its details
are, by no means, the most uniformly confident of its results; an
investigation which assigns a certain date to each book, as the lowest
limit of security; and says, if you dare to fix this letter or that
Gospel upon a time later by half a century, you are lost for ever.

But may not the young and the ignorant trust in the guidance of a
teacher? In his sermon on private judgment, Dr. Tattershall treats of
this question, and lays down the following rule:—“In the case of adults,
such reliance is justifiable _so far_, and _no farther_, than it is
unavoidable. So far as God has not given the ability, or the opportunity
of investigation, so far he will not require it; but in whatever degree
any person has the power and opportunity of examining the will of God
for himself,—in that degree,—whether he exercise his privilege _or
not,—God will hold him responsible_. As to the liability to fall into
error;—beyond all doubt, such liability exists, whether we submit to the
guidance of any teacher, or exercise our own private judgment.”[111]
How, let me ask, can we avoid drawing the following inferences?

(1.) That the greater part of mankind must be held to be in a condition
rendering this reliance on a teacher “_unavoidable_.”

(2.) For this reliance, then, such portion of mankind must be held
_justified in the sight of God_.

(3.) But such dependence makes them liable to err; and must, in fact,
have led countless multitudes into error.

(4.) If these errors are fatal to salvation, then _God_ _inflicts
eternal torments for the inevitable results of a justifiable act_.

(5.) If these errors are not fatal to salvation, then _there is
salvation out of the faith_.

The result, then, of this external system is, that you may be saved on
either of two conditions; that you belong to the orthodox literary sect,
and hold the antiquarian opinions of the priests; or, that you belong to
the ignorant, and can find out the right persons to whom to say, “I will
believe, as you believe.”

Reverse the supposition. Conceive that in the process, becoming ever
more searching, of historical inquiry, the other and external method
should be found to be inadequate to the maintenance of its
superstructure; what would be the fate of Christianity, trusted solely
to its self-evidence? I will imagine even the worst: and suppose that
the first three Gospels are shown to be not personally authentic, not
the independent productions of three apostolic men; but a compilation of
very composite structure, consisting of (we will say) some thirty
fragments, obviously from different hands, and all of anonymous origin.
In such case, the individual testimony of eye-witnesses being gone, the
whole edifice of external proof which supports a dogmatic Christianity,
must fall. But the self-evidence of a moral and spiritual Christianity,
of a Christianity that clings to the person and spirit of Christ, is not
only unharmed, but even incalculably increased. For how often, and how
truly, has it been argued, that the mere inspection of the four Gospels
is enough to prove the reality of Christ; that the invention, and
consistent maintenance of a character so unapproachable, so destitute of
all archetype beneath the skies, so transcending the fictions of the
noblest genius, and so unlike them, are things utterly incredible, were
they supposed even of one writer: and that, for the same divine image to
gleam forth with coincident perfection from four, belongs to the highest
order of impossibilities. What then should we say, if these four were
resolved into thirty? The coalescence of so many fragmentary records,
could no more make a Christ, than the upsetting of an artist’s colours
could paint a Raffaelle. Whatever then becomes of Church Christianity,
that which lives in Christ, and has the power of love in man, is
everlasting as the soul.

We are warned that “the Bible is _not_ a shifting, mutable, uncertain
thing.” We echo the warning, with this addition, that Christianity _is_
a progressive thing; not a doctrine dead, and embalmed in creeds, but a
spirit living and impersonated in Christ. Two things are necessary to a
revelation: its record, which is permanent; its readers, who perpetually
change. From the collision of the lesson and the mind on which it drops,
starts up the living religion that saves the soul within, and acts on
the theatre of the world without. Each eye sees what it can, and what it
needs; each age develops a new and nobler idea from the immortal page.
We are like children, who, in reading a book above their years, pass
innocently and unconsciously over that which is not suited to their
state. In this divine tale of Christ, every class and every period
seizes, in succession, the views and emotions which most meet its wants.
It is with Scripture as with nature. The everlasting heavens spread
above the gaze of Herschel, as they did over that of Abraham; yet the
latter saw but a spangled dome, the former a forest of innumerable
worlds. To the mind of this profound observer, there was as much a _new
creation_, as if those heavens had been, at the time, called up and
spread before his sight. And thus it is with the Word of God. As its
power and beauty develop themselves continually, it is as if Heaven were
writing it now, and leaf after leaf dropped directly from the skies. Nor
is there any heresy like that, which denies this progressive unfolding
of divine wisdom, shuts up the spirit of heaven in the verbal
metaphysics and scholastic creeds of a half-barbarous period,—treats the
inspiration of God as a dry piece of antiquity, and cannot see that it
communes afresh with the soul of every age; and sheds, from the living
Fount of truth, a guidance ever new.

NOTES.

---------------------

_On the Improved Version._

Great allowance must perhaps be made for the clergymen who persist,
after repeated expostulation, in their assumption that the Improved
Version is an authoritative exposition of Unitarian theology. The
convenience of limiting their studies, for the most part, to a single
work, and the inconvenience of dispensing with the previous labours of
Dr. Nares, and Archbishop Magee, whose hostile criticisms furnish the
orthodox divine with invaluable prolegomena to the book, ought to
diminish our surprise at the tenacious adherence to this ground of
attack. The advantage too of giving fresh currency to the popular
notion, that some dreadful production exists, containing unmentionable
impieties, and constituting the “Unitarian Bible,” is undeniable. It is
evident that the utility of fostering this impression is by no means
overlooked: for after strong assertion and contemptuous comments have
given to a very few passages of the Improved Version the appearance, to
an unlearned audience, of falsification of the word of God, I have heard
it said, that these cases are but a _small sample of a system_, which
might be illustrated to an indefinite extent from every page. As there
are not, on an average, more than two variations in a page from
Archbishop Newcome, the charge must, in an incalculable majority of
instances, fall on him.

I am at a loss, however, to perceive even any controversial advantage to
be gained by the rash statement of Mr. Byrth; that every Unitarian
minister is as much bound to uphold the criticism and interpretation of
the Improved Version, as the Established Clergy to maintain the
Thirty-nine Articles. A clergyman, it is known, signs the articles, and
solemnly contracts to preach in conformity with them; a minister among
Unitarians may never see the Improved Version, or hear its name. During
a five years’ course of study at the college where I received my
education for the ministry, I do not remember any mention of it in the
theological classes, and only two in the Greek classes: both of which
were condemnatory; one, of the introduction of the English indefinite
article to indicate, in certain cases, the absence of the definite
article in the original; the other, of the rendering of the preposition
διά, with the genitive, by the word “for.” The fact that most ministers
of our persuasion subscribe to the British and Foreign Unitarian
Association, which has succeeded to the property in the Improved
Version, and continues to circulate it, no more makes them responsible
for its criticisms than a contribution to the Bible Society makes a
clergyman accountable for the forgery of the “heavenly witnesses.” The
one aids in distributing a possibly defective, the other a certainly
interpolated, copy of the Christian records. Let us apply another test
to this imprudent parallel between the established clergy, and the
Unitarian ministers. In the United States of America, no one, I presume,
could take holy orders in the Episcopal church, without pledging his
assent to the Thirty-nine Articles; and should he cease to approve of
them, his ordination vow would require him to resign his preferment. But
in that country are hundreds of Unitarian ministers, who know nothing of
the Improved Version; and would be as much astonished to be told that
they were bound by it, as would Dr. Tattershall to hear that he must
answer for the Oxford Tracts.

But the mere fact, that within a year after the publication of this
work, a Unitarian divine, a subscriber to the Unitarian society, in a
Unitarian periodical, submitted it to a criticism far more searching and
elaborate than that which an acumen sharpened by theological hostility
is now able to produce, is sufficient to set in its true light the
statement which I have quoted. I beg to call the attention of our
Reverend opponents to the following enumeration of the points, to which
the censures of the Reviewer (Dr. Carpenter) are directed.

(1.) The selection of Newcome’s Revision, instead of the authorized
version, as the basis.

(2.) The departure, and without any intelligible rule, from Griesbach’s
text, which, in the introduction, had been mentioned in a way to excite
the expectation of its invariable adoption. Of these departures, a
complete table is given.

(3.) The neglect of proper acknowledgment and defence of these
departures.

(4.) The professed employment of brackets for one purpose, (to indicate
words which, according to Griesbach, were probably, though not
certainly, to be expunged,) and the actual use of them for another; as,
for example, in the introduction of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which is thus
enclosed.

(5.) The use of italics (intended to indicate doubtful authority)
without adequate evidence of doubtful authority, and in violation of the
apparent intention to repudiate critical conjecture. And in particular,
the use of this type in the introduction to St. Luke’s gospel; which
“the evidence is far too little to justify;” and in the introduction to
St. Matthew’s gospel. Both these examples are considered by the reviewer
as instances of _conjectural criticism_.

(6.) The unwarrantable license allowed in general to conjectural
emendation of the text; of which particular cases are adduced; as the
transposition of verses, John i. 15, 18; and, in a lower sense of the
word _conjecture_, the omission of διὰ τῆς πίστεως, Rom. iii. 25; and
the καὶ in 2 Tim. iii. 16.

(7.) The departures from the received text without notice. Of these
departures, a complete table is given.

(8.) The departures from Newcome’s Revision, without sufficient notice;
of these, a list was given, and a synoptical table has since been
published in the appendix to Dr. Carpenter’s reply to the “unanswered”
Archbishop Magee.

(9.) The use of the English indefinite article, in certain cases, where
there is no Greek definite article. For example, the Centurion’s
exclamation at the crucifixion, Matt. xxvii. 54; in his remarks on
which, Mr. Byrth will perceive that he has been anticipated by the
reviewer.

(10.) The introduction of doctrinal notes, which the reviewer thinks
ought to have been entirely excluded.[112]

The culpable omission of the epithet, “Unitarian,” from the description
of the “Society for promoting Christian Knowledge,” in the title-page of
the first edition, has since received the censure of the same friendly
but just critic.[113]

If then, all that is original and “orthodox,” in the recent assaults on
the Improved Version, be the sarcasm and extravagance; and all that is
“candid” and “scholar-like” was long ago anticipated by a Unitarian
divine, (to whom Dr. Nares awards the praise of being “the very learned
and dispassionate reviewer,”) with what propriety can we be held
responsible, as Unitarian ministers, for the peculiarities of the work,
and called upon to defend it from strictures, produced at second-hand in
Christ Church, and originally published among ourselves. If Dr.
Carpenter had been minister in Liverpool, instead of Bristol, would he
have been bound to come forward and answer _himself_?

I by no means intend to charge the clergymen engaged in this controversy
with plagiarism. Their great authority, Archbishop Magee, so completely
withheld in his postscript, all notice of his obligations to the
Unitarian Reviewer, that a reader may well be excused for not knowing
that there was such a person. Nor do I at all doubt the competency of
our respected opponents to originate whatever they have advanced,
without the aid of any one’s previous researches. I simply affirm that
they have been anticipated, in a quarter, and to an extent, which
disprove their assertions respecting the acceptance and influence of the
Improved Version among Unitarians.

For the very same reason, however, that we are not bound to praise this
work when faults are fairly attributed to it, neither are we bound to be
silent, when merit is unjustly denied it. With the corrections
introduced in the fourth and fifth Editions, it has the exclusive honour
of accomplishing the following important ends:

(1.) It exhibits the text of the New Testament in the most perfect
state, being conformed to Griesbach’s second Edition.

(2.) It enables the English reader to compare this critical with the
Received text, all their variations being noticed.

(3.) It places before its possessors Archbishop Newcome’s Revision,
which otherwise would have passed into unmerited oblivion. Wherever it
departs from its basis, and advances any new translation, the Primate’s
rendering is given also; so that the whole extent of the innovation is
seen, and free choice afforded to the reader.

When the advocates of the common version shall exert themselves to bring
it into accordance with the true text, they will attack the Improved
Version, from a safer position. But so long as they leave with this
heretical work the sole praise, among British translations, of showing
what the Evangelists and Apostles really wrote, and content themselves
with circulating a version containing words and passages, without mark
or warning, which they know to be spurious, and in more than one case,
to be ancient theological allies of their creed, they are too much open
to the charge of availing themselves of detected forgeries, to be
entitled to read lectures to others, about reverence for the text. Dr.
Tattershall enforces well “the duty of preserving the Canon of Scripture
in its _integrity_.” Will he permit me to remind him of the duty of
preserving it in its _simplicity_: or is there, in the _bare proposal of
curtailment of the volume_, a sinfulness which does not exist in _the
practical and persevering maintenance of known interpolation_?

---------------------

_On the Ebionites and their Gospel._

The argument of Mr. Belsham against the authenticity of Matthew’s
account of the miraculous conception appears to me very unsound: but Dr.
Tattershall’s criticism upon it, I must think to be altogether
unsuccessful; if at least, amid its intricate construction, I have
really apprehended the points to which its force is applied. In
rejecting this portion of Scripture, Mr. Belsham relies on the authority
of the Nazarenes and Ebionites, or early Hebrew Christians: who are
affirmed by Epiphanius and Jerome, to have used copies of Matthew’s
Gospel, without the introductory passages in question.

As the value of this argument depends altogether on the character of the
attesting parties and documents, Dr. Tattershall calls in question the
respectability of them all; and disparages, first, the ancient Nazarenes
and Ebionites themselves; secondly, the testimony, in this matter, of
Epiphanius and Jerome; thirdly, the Hebrew gospel or record, which they
describe. The positions advanced under every one of these heads, appear
to me to be erroneous.

I. Nothing, it is said, can be more incorrect than to admit the claim of
the Nazarenes and Ebionites to be regarded as the _original_, or main
body of Hebrew Christians. They were a _sect_, at first united, then
divided into two; successors of the Judaizing Christians; and after
Adrian’s destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 132), they _separated_ from the
general community of the Christian Church.

I certainly had conceived that this _quæstio vexata_ of ecclesiastical
history, might be considered as set at rest, since the controversy
respecting it between Bishop Horsley and Dr. Priestley; and still more,
since the production of many additional _loca probantia_ from the
Fathers, by Eichhorn, Olshausen, Bertholdt and others, who have engaged
in the inquiry respecting the origin of the three first gospels. If,
however, the subject is still open to agitation, the principle on which
it must be discussed is evident. If, as Dr. Tattershall states, the
Nazarenes and Ebionites did not embrace _in extent_, the main body, and
_in time_, the original societies, of Jewish believers, it is incumbent
on him to find some clear traces of _other_ or _earlier_ Hebrew
Christians, denominated by some different term, or at all events
_excluded from these_. Until such persons are discovered, in the
primitive history of the church, the Nazarenes and Ebionites must remain
in undisturbed possession of their title as “_The_ early Hebrew
Christians.” Meanwhile, in direct proof of their claim to be so
regarded, I submit the following considerations:

(1.) Their name is applied, in a direct definition, to the _whole_ of
the Jewish Christians. Origen says, “_Those from among the Jews who
received Jesus as the Christ_,” were called Ebionites.[114]

(2.) The characteristic sentiments of this “_sect_,” are ascribed to
_the early Hebrew Christians generally_. These were, the persuasion of
the continued obligation of the Mosaic law, on persons of Jewish birth,
and the belief that Christ was a creature, some considering him as
simply human, others as pre-existent.[115] Origen says, “Those from
among the Jews who have faith in Jesus, have not abandoned their ancient
law; for they live in conformity with it, deriving even their name
(according to the true interpretation of the word,) from the poverty of
the law; for _Ebion_, among the Jews, means _poor_.”[116] Origen again
says, “And when you observe the belief respecting the Saviour, held by
_those from among the Jews who have faith in Jesus_, some supposing that
he was of Mary and Joseph, and others that he was of Mary alone and the
Holy Spirit, but still without the notion of his Deity, &c.”[117]

(3.) The characteristic _Gospel_ of the sect (under its frequent title
“Gospel according to the Hebrews”) was used _by the Hebrew Christians
generally_. Eusebius says: “In this number, some have placed the Gospel
according to the Hebrews, which is a favourite especially with the
Hebrews who receive Christ.”[118] The gospel here given to “the Hebrews
who received Christ,” is given in the following to the “Ebionites,” by
the same author. “They (the Ebionites) made use only of that which is
called ‘the Gospel according to the Hebrews;’ the rest they made small
account of.”[119]

If these passages be thought sufficient to identify the Ebionites and
Nazarenes with the “main body of Hebrew Christians,” perhaps the
following may be held to prove their early existence; as it states that
they presented the Apostle John with a motive for composing his Gospel:
Epiphanius says, “When therefore the blessed John comes and finds men
speculating about the human nature of Christ,—the Ebionites going astray
respecting the genealogy of Christ in the flesh, deduced from Abraham,
and by Luke from Adam; and when he finds the Cerinthians and Merinthians
affirming his natural birth as a mere man; the Nazarenes too, and many
other heresies; coming as he did, fourth, or in the rear of the
Evangelists, he began, if I may say so, to recall the wanderers, and
those who speculated about the human nature of Christ, and to say to
them, when from his station in the rear, he beheld some declining into
rugged paths, and quitting, as it were, the straight and true one,
‘whither are you tending, whither are you going, you who are treading a
path rugged and obstructed, conducting, moreover, to a precipice?
Return, it is not so; the God, Logos, who was begotten of the Father
from the beginning, is not from Mary only.’”[120]

That the Nazarenes and Ebionites were truly “_the_ early Hebrew
Christians,” must be considered as a fact established by such evidence
as the foregoing, till some testimony to the contrary can be produced.
That they were the successors of the Judaizing Christians reproved by
St. Paul is an assertion destitute of support; for the opponents who
troubled the _Apostle of the Gentiles_ were distinguished by their
pertinacious attempts, as Hebrews, to _force the Mosaic Law on Gentile
converts_; whereas, respecting the Nazarenes, Lardner observes, “Divers
learned moderns are now convinced of this, and readily allow, that the
Jewish believers, who were called Nazarenes, _did not_ impose the
ordinances of the law upon others, though they observed them as the
descendants of Israel and Abraham.”[121]

The application by Epiphanius of the words “_sect_” and “_heretics_” to
these believers, does not prove that he was speaking of a _different
class_ from the early Hebrew Christians; but only that this same class
began, in his time, to be spoken of in a different and more disparaging
way. He is the first writer, so far as I can discover, who describes
them in such reproachful language. On this point Dr. Wall observes: “He
styles them heretics, for no other reason that I can see, but that they,
together with their Christian faith, continued the use of circumcision
and of the Jewish rites; which things St. Paul never blamed in a Jewish
Christian, though, in the Gentile Christian, he did: and Epiphanius with
the same propriety, as far as I can perceive, might have blamed St.
James, bishop of Jerusalem, and those thousands of Jewish Christians
with him, concerning whom James said to Paul, ‘Thou seest, brother, how
many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous
for the law.’”[122]

And as to the Nazarenes and Ebionites separating from the general
community of the Christian church, after the second destruction of
Jerusalem by Adrian, and thus _bringing upon themselves_ the opprobrium
of heresy, the fact, stated in this form, cannot be proved. From the
first, the Hebrew Christians had formed a separate body from the Gentile
Christians. But their proportion to the whole body of believers seems to
have been for some time too considerable to admit of their being spoken
of in contemptuous language. When the Gentile portion of the Church
became altogether ascendant, and especially when it furnished all the
_ecclesiastical writers_, (one of whose chief functions it has been, in
every age, _to call names_,) the Jewish brethren, destitute of all
pretensions to philosophy, and free from that ambitious speculative
spirit out of which orthodox theology arose, were naturally treated with
less respect, and regarded as exceptions to that general union which had
consolidated itself independently of them, and at last completely left
them out. It does not appear that any further change was wrought by
Adrian’s destruction of Jerusalem, than necessarily followed from his
resolution to exclude, from the new colony which he founded there, all
who practised Jewish rites. This imperial determination compelled the
withdrawal of the Hebrew Christians to the North of Palestine; and they
were replaced by a new church, whose Gentile origin and customs
qualified its members (under the Emperor’s decree) for settlement on the
ancient site.

II. Dr. Tattershall disparages the testimony of the witnesses cited in
this cause,—Epiphanius and Jerome; and not without good reason, if there
should be sufficient proof, _when the whole case is before us_, of his
two allegations, viz.:

First, That Epiphanius contradicts himself; affirming now the
completeness, and then the mutilation, of the Gospel in question.

Secondly, That Epiphanius contradicts Jerome; in asserting, _what
“Jerome does not admit_,” the identity of the Ebionite Gospel with that
of St. Matthew.

Premising that one and the same work is to be understood as described,
by the several titles, “Nazarene Gospel,” “Ebionite Gospel,” “Gospel
according to the Hebrews,” “Gospel according to the Twelve Apostles,” I
would submit that the first of these allegations is more plausible than
true, and that the second is wholly untenable.

The contradictory statements of Epiphanius are the following:

(a.) “They (_i.e._ the Nazarenes) have the Gospel of Matthew _most
entire_ in the Hebrew language among them; for this, truly, is still
preserved among them, as it was at first, in Hebrew characters. But I
know not whether they have taken away the genealogy from Abraham to
Christ.”[123]

(b.) “In that Gospel which they (_i.e._ the Ebionites) have called the
Gospel according to St. Matthew, which is _not entire and perfect, but
corrupted and curtailed_, and which they call the Hebrew Gospel,”
&c.[124]

The verbal contradiction between these two passages, is no doubt
manifest enough; and in a writer of more accuracy than Epiphanius, might
have justified the proposal of Casaubon (approved by Jones) to effect a
violent reconciliation, by the conjectural insertion of the negative
adverb in the former sentence, which would then describe the document as
_not_ wholly perfect. But the looseness of this author’s style appears
to me sufficient to explain the opposition between the statements; which
seem indeed, to look defiance at each other, when brought by force, face
to face; but which at the intervals of separate composition, may be, by
no means, irreconcilable. That in the first, Epiphanius designed the
phrase “most entire,” to be understood with considerable latitude, is
evident from the expression of suspicion which instantly follows, that
the genealogy might probably be absent. And if the work in question
contained a quantity of matter additional to Matthew’s Gospel, whilst it
also _omitted_ some of its integral parts; it seems not unnatural that
the same writer, who with his thoughts running on its redundancies, had
at one time called it a _most full_ copy, should at another, when
dwelling on its deficiencies, style it an incomplete edition of the
first Evangelist. But it is more important to observe, that _on the
points_ for which the _Editors of the Improved Version_ adduce the
testimony of Epiphanius, viz., to identify the Gospel of Matthew with
that of the Nazarenes and Ebionites, and to attest the absence from this
book of the story of the miraculous conception, there is here _no
contradiction whatever_. In _both_ passages he states the work to be
Matthew’s, and in _neither_, according to Dr. Tattershall, does he say
that the first two chapters were wanting. The harmony then, on these,
the only points in dispute, is complete.

(2.) “Jerome,” it is said, “does not admit the work in question to be
the Gospel of St. Matthew;” which puts him at issue with Epiphanius.
Will Dr. Tattershall permit me to lay before him a passage of Jerome,
which has been under his eye recently, for he has quoted a sentence from
Jones which occurs on the adjacent page; it runs thus. “Matthew, also
called Levi, who became from a publican an Apostle, was the first who
composed a gospel of Christ; and for the sake of those who believed in
Christ among the Jews, wrote it in the Hebrew language and letters; but
it is uncertain who it was that translated it into Greek. Moreover the
Hebrew (copy) itself is to this time preserved in the library of
Cæsarea, which Pamphilus, the martyr, with much diligence collected. The
Nazarenes, who live in Beræa, a city of Syria, and make use of this
volume, granted me the favour of writing it out; in which (Gospel) there
is this observable, that wherever the Evangelist either himself cites,
or introduces our Saviour as citing, any passage out of the Old
Testament, he does not follow the translation of the Seventy, but the
Hebrew copies: of which there are these two instances, viz., that ‘Out
of Egypt I have called my son;’[125] and that, ‘He[126] shall be called
a Nazarene.’”[127]

Here Jerome, I presume, _does_ admit the Nazarene Gospel to be that of
Matthew; and the harmony on this point, between him and Epiphanius, is
complete.

Besides alleging the above contradiction, Dr. Tattershall notices a
supposed _variance_ (not amounting to inconsistency) between these two
Fathers on another point. From a statement of Jerome, he “thinks it may
be fairly inferred,” that _he knew_ the first two chapters of Matthew’s
Gospel to be wanting in the Nazarene record. But it is denied that
Epiphanius gives any countenance to the notion of their absence. Now I
conceive that if this statement be precisely reversed, we shall have the
true state of the case before us. Epiphanius gives us testimony to the
absence, Jerome to the presence, of these chapters in the Nazarene
Gospel.

First, as to Epiphanius: he makes the following statements bearing on
this point:

(1.) He says that “the beginning of their (the Ebionites’) Gospel was
this: ‘It came to pass in the days of Herod, the king of Judæa, that
John came baptizing with the baptism of repentance in the river
Jordan.’”[128] Is it not evident from this, that the initial event of
this narrative was the advent of the Baptist, and that the previous
account of the birth of Christ was absent? So, at least, it has been
hitherto supposed.

(2.) He says in positive terms, “They have taken away the genealogy from
Matthew, and _accordingly_ begin their Gospel, as I have above said,
with these words; ‘It came to pass,’ &c.”[129] It cannot be imagined
that this will bear any but the common interpretation, that the Gospel
began with the substance of our third chapter. The introduction of the
miraculous conception, after John’s mission, would be an incredible
disturbance of arrangement.[130]

(3.) He says, “That Cerinthus and Carpocrates, using this same Gospel of
theirs, would prove from the beginning of that Gospel according to
Matthew, viz. by its genealogy, that Christ proceeded from the seed of
Joseph and Mary.” But to what purpose would these heretics have put this
construction upon the genealogy, and argued from it the mere humanity of
Christ’s origin, if it was immediately followed by a section, flatly
contradicting what they had been labouring to prove? It is impossible
then to get rid of Epiphanius’s testimony to the absence of these
chapters.

Secondly, let us turn to Jerome. Dr. Tattershall conceives that because
this author speaks of certain men without the spirit and grace of God,
as having had some concern in the composition of this gospel, we may
conclude that the introductory chapters were wanting from the copy which
he used. The inference is not very obvious; and is at once destroyed by
the fact, that Jerome’s quotations from the Nazarene Gospel, contain
passages of Matthew’s introductory chapters. In a passage, _e.g._, which
I have adduced above, occur two instances; “Out of Egypt I have called
my son;” and, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

_This_ discrepancy between these two fathers would have furnished Dr.
Tattershall with a more powerful argument against the Editor’s note,
than any which he has adduced; and have enabled him to show that Jerome,
being cited for one purpose, establishes precisely the reverse.

III. Dr. Tattershall adduces in evidence against the worth of the
Nazarene Gospel, the absurd chronological mistake in its first sentence,
which assigns the Baptist’s appearance to the days of Herod, king of
Judæa.

On this I have only to observe, that it might have been well to state,
that the blunder is commonly attributed to Epiphanius himself, rather
than to the Gospel which he cites. Whatever that work may have been, it
was produced near the spot where the Herods lived, in times when the
remembrance of them was fresh, for the people over whom they reigned; so
that a mistake of that magnitude, in its first verse, must be regarded
as of improbable occurrence. On the other hand, Epiphanius, it is
admitted, _had never seen this Gospel_, and therefore cited it from
hearsay; he wrote in the latter part of the fourth century, and is
remarkable for inaccuracy of every kind, and especially with regard to
time. There is then no improbability in the supposition that Epiphanius
confounded Herod the king, with Herod the tetrarch, and with the purpose
of explanation, inserted a mistake, by adding the words, “King of
Judæa.” Eichhorn says, “Two different Herods are confounded
together,—the King Herod under whom John was born, and Herod Antipas,
under whom the Baptist publicly appeared;—an evident mark of a later
annotating or correcting hand, unguided by a knowledge of the true
chronology, as contained in Luke, and so substituting one Herod for
another.”[131] For the foregoing reasons, it appears to me that Dr.
Tattershall has not, by making his strictures sound, earned the right to
render them severe.

The evidence bearing upon the introduction of Luke’s Gospel, is much
simpler and less confused; and to Dr. Tattershall’s estimate of it, no
valid objection, I think, can be urged.

---------------------

_On the Chronological Inconsistency between the
introductory chapters of Matthew, and those of Luke._

In his note on this subject, Dr. Tattershall points out, as an example
of carelessness in the Editors of the Improved Version, the following
discrepancy between two of their statements. In their note on Matthew i.
16, they say, “If it be true, as Luke relates, that ‘Jesus was entering
upon his thirtieth year, in the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius;’” and in their note on Luke i. 4, they say, “The Evangelist
(Luke) _expressly affirms_ that Jesus _had completed_ his thirtieth
year,” &c. It would have been only just to add, that in the more recent
editions of the Improved Version, this inconsistency does not exist. The
fourth edition (1817) lies before me; and in it the latter note stands
thus: “The Evangelist expressly affirms that Jesus had entered upon, or,
as Grotius understands it, had completed his thirtieth year,” &c.

To all the other strictures contained in Dr. Tattershall’s note, “the
Unitarian Editors” appear to me to be justly liable.[132] The inaccuracy
of their chronology was long ago perceived, by more friendly critics
than their present assailants; and sounder calculations of the dates of
our Lord’s birth, and ministry, were instituted and published by Dr.
Carpenter, in the admirable dissertation prefixed to his “Apostolical
Harmony of the Gospels.” Not being aware of any method, at all
satisfactory, by which the notes in the “Improved Version,” referring to
this point, can be defended, I do not profess to understand why they
appear again and again without remark or correction, in the successive
editions of that work.

Dr. Tattershall, I perceive, adopts the usual mode of reconciling the
chronology of Matthew and Luke; and supposes that the reign of Tiberius
must be reckoned, not from his succession to the dignity of Emperor, on
the death of Augustus, but from his previous association with Augustus,
in the tribunitial authority. Widely as this explanation has been
adopted, it cannot be denied that it has been invented to suit the case;
that such a mode of reckoning would never have been thought of, had it
not been for this discrepancy between the two Evangelists; and that it
has nothing to support it but the evidence which belongs to all
hypotheses, viz., that if true, it removes the difficulty which it was
designed to explain. Even the industry of Lardner has failed to present
us with any instance in which a Roman historian has reckoned the reign
of Tiberius, from this association with his predecessor; or with any
distinct trace that such a mode of computation was ever employed. And it
is notorious that all the Christian Fathers calculated the fifteenth
year of Tiberius from the death of Augustus. Should Dr. Tattershall be
in possession of any evidence in support of this mode of reckoning, more
satisfactory than that which has hitherto been adduced, he would render
an important service to biblical literature by producing it.

---------------------

It is so universally understood that we are indebted to Mr. Thirlwall
for the admirable translation of Schleiermacher’s Essay, that I conceive
there can be no impropriety in speaking of the work as his; though his
name does not appear in the title-page;—a circumstance of which I was
not aware, till making this extract for the press. The whole note from
which are taken the words in the Lecture, is as follows:—“The arguments
by which Hug attempted to reconcile the two Evangelists on the residence
of Joseph, are extremely slight and unsatisfactory. He admits that St.
Matthew supposes Bethlehem to have been Joseph’s usual dwelling-place.
But, he asks, was St. Matthew wrong? This, however, is not the question,
but only whether he is consistent with St. Luke. Now, nothing can be
more evident than that, according to the account of the latter, Joseph
was a total stranger at Bethlehem. Bethlehem was indeed, as Hug remarks,
_in one sense_ his own city, but clearly not in the sense that Matthew’s
account supposes. Here too, therefore, Schleiermacher’s position seems
to remain unshaken.”—(See note on p. 44, of Translation of
Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay on St. Luke’s Gospel.)

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture II.

Footnote 48:

Galatians iii. 24.

Footnote 49:

Acts xxvi. 26.

Footnote 50:

John xiv. 23.

Footnote 51:

John vi. 44.

Footnote 52:

John xviii. 37.

Footnote 53:

John x. 37.

Footnote 54:

John x. 27.

Footnote 55:

John vii. 17.

Footnote 56:

Lectures on the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible. Preliminary
Lecture II. p. 35.

Footnote 57:

Preliminary Lecture I., pp. 4, 5.

Footnote 58:

Jer. xxxvi. 23. See Rev. Dr. Tattershall’s Lecture on the Integrity of
the Canon. Introduction.

Footnote 59:

Rev. F. Ould’s Letter of February 11, 1839.

Footnote 60:

The Improved Version was published in August, 1808. Rev. T. Lindsey,
who had been labouring under the effects of paralysis ever since 1801,
died November 3rd, the same year.

Footnote 61:

See Note A.

Footnote 62:

See Note B.

Footnote 63:

Evidence of Christianity, part III, chapter 2.

Footnote 64:

See Note C.

Footnote 65:

See Note D.

Footnote 66:

Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, part II. ch. ii. § 1.

Footnote 67:

Matt. xiii. 58.

Footnote 68:

John iv. 18.

Footnote 69:

John x. 32.

Footnote 70:

John x. 37.

Footnote 71:

Luke x. 17.

Footnote 72:

Acts ii. 1-4.

Footnote 73:

Pp. 236, 237.

Footnote 74:

John xix. 35.

Footnote 75:

xxi. 24.

Footnote 76:

Luke i. 2.

Footnote 77:

Acts ii. 1-4.

Footnote 78:

1 Cor. xiv. 18.

Footnote 79:

1 Cor. xiv. _passim_: especially 4, 5, 13, 19, 23.

Footnote 80:

1 Cor. xii. 8, 10.

Footnote 81:

Acts vi. 1-4.

Footnote 82:

Luke i. 15.

Footnote 83:

Matt. xii. 3.

Footnote 84:

John xiv. 16, 17, 26.

Footnote 85:

Discourses on the principal Points of the Socinian Controversy, p.
341. Disc. xi.

Footnote 86:

1 John ii. 20.

Footnote 87:

2 Pet. i. 21.

Footnote 88:

Unwilling to repeat what I have already said, in a former publication,
I have contented myself with a brief and slight notice of this
celebrated text. It is discussed in a less cursory manner in the notes
to the first Lecture in the “Rationale of Religious Inquiry.” I would
only add, that Schleusner considers the word θεὀπνευστος, as
belonging, not to the predicate, but to the subject, of the sentence.
See his Lexicon in Nov. Test. in verb. “In N. T. semel legitur 2 Tim.
iii. 16. πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος, omnis scriptura divinitus inspirata,
seu, quæ est originis divinæ.”

Footnote 89:

Sermon on the Nature and Extent of the Right of Private Judgment p.
238.

Footnote 90:

P. 249.

Footnote 91:

Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke.
Introduction by the Translator, p. xv.

Footnote 92:

Pp. xv. and xi.

Footnote 93:

Evidences of Christianity, part III. ch. i.

Footnote 94:

Matt. iv. 12-22.

Footnote 95:

John i. 35-51.

Footnote 96:

Mark i. 16-20.

Footnote 97:

Luke v. 10, 11.

Footnote 98:

Matt. xxvi. 69-end.

Footnote 99:

Luke xxii. 56-62.

Footnote 100:

John xviii. 15-25.

Footnote 101:

xxvii. 32.

Footnote 102:

xxiii. 26.

Footnote 103:

xix. 17.

Footnote 104:

xxvii. 37.

Footnote 105:

xv. 26.

Footnote 106:

xxiii. 38.

Footnote 107:

xix. 19.

Footnote 108:

xxvii. 44.

Footnote 109:

xv. 32.

Footnote 110:

xxiii. 39-43.

Footnote 111:

Pp. 243, 244.

Footnote 112:

See Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, 1809, pp.
97, _seqq._; 152, _seqq._; 274, _seqq._; 384, _seqq._

Footnote 113:

Reply to Magee, p. 302.

Footnote 114:

Καὶ Ἐβιωναῖοι χρηματίζουσιν οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰουδαίων τὸν Ἰησοῦν ὡς Χριστὸν
παραδεξάμενοι.—_Contr. Cels._, lib. ii. c. 1. Op. tom. i. pp. 385 C.
386 A. Ed. Delarue. Paris. 1733.

Footnote 115:

Οὗτοι δε εἰσὶν οἱ διττοὶ Ἐβιωναῖοι, ἤτοι ἐκ παρθένου ὁμολογοῦντες
ὁμοίως ἡμῖν τὸν Ἰμσοῦν, ἤ οὐχ οὕτω γεγεννῆσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὡς τοὶς
ἀνθρώποις.—_Contr. Cels._, lib. v. c. 61. Op. tom. i. p. 625 A.

Footnote 116:

Οἱ ἀπὸ Ἰουδαίων εἰς τὸν Ἰησοῦν πιστεύοντες οὐ καταλελοίπασι τὸν
πάτριον νόμον· βιοῦσι γὰρ κατ’ αὐτὸν, ἐπώνυμοί τε κατὰ τὴν ἐκδοχὴν
πτωχείας τοῦ νόμου γεγενημένοι. Ἐβίων τε γὰρ ὁ πτωχὸς παρὰ Ἰουδαίοις
καλεῖται.—_Contr. Cels._, lib. ii. c. 1. Op. tom. i. p. 385.

Footnote 117:

Καὶ ἐπὰν ἴδῃς τῶν ἀπὸ Ιουδαίων πιστευόντων εἰς τὸν Ἰησοῦν τὴν περὶ τοῦ
σωτῆρος πίστιν, ὅτε μὲν ἐκ Μαρίας καὶ τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ οἰομένων αὐτὸν εἶναι,
ὅτε δὲ ἐκ Μαρίας μὲν μόνης καὶ τοῦ θείου πνεύματος, οὐ μὴν καὶ μετὰ
τῆς περὶ αὐτοῦ θεολογίας, ὄψει πῶς οὗτος ὁ τυ φλός λέγι &c.—_Comment.
in Matt._, tom. xvi. c. 12. Op. tom. iii. p. 733 A.

Footnote 118:

Ἤδη δ’ ἐν τούτοις τινὲς καὶ τὸ καθ’ Ἑβραίους εὐαγγέλιον κατέλεξαν, ᾧ
μάλιστα Ἑβραίων οἱ τὸν παραδεξάμενοι χαίρουσι.—_Hist. Eccles._, lib.
iii. c. 25. vol. i. pp. 246, 247. Heinichen Lips. 1827.

Footnote 119:

Εὐαγγελίῳ δὲ μόνῳ τῷ καθ’ Ἑβραίους λεγομένῳ χρώμενοι, τῶν λοιπῶν
σμικρὸν ἐποιοῦντο λόγον.—Lib. iii. c. 27. vol. i. p. 252. Both
passages are in Jones, Pt. II. ch. 25.

Footnote 120:

Διό καὶ ὁ Ιωάννης ἐλθὼν ὁ μακάριος, καὶ εὑρὼν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους
ἠσχολημένους περὶ τὴν κάτω Χριστοῦ παρουσίαν, καὶ τῶν μὲν Ἐβιωναίων
πλανηθέντων διὰ τὴν ἔνσαρκον Χριστοῦ γενεαλογίαν, ἀπὸ Ἀβραὰμ
καταγομένην, καὶ Λουκᾶ ἀναγομένην ἄχρι τοῦ Ἀδὰμ· εὑρὼν δὲ τοὺς
Κηρινθιανοὺς καὶ Μηρινθιανοὺς ἐκ παρατριβῆς αὐτὸν λέγοντας εἶναι ψιλὸν
ἄνθρωπον, καὶ τοὺς Ναζωραίους, καὶ ἄλλας πολλὰς αἱρέσεις, ὡς κατόπιν
ἐλθὼν, τέταρτος γὰρ οὗτος εὐαγγελίζεται, ἄρχεται ἀνακαλεῖσθαι, ὡς
εἰπεῖν, τοὺς πλανηθέντας καὶ ἠσχολημένους περὶ τὴν κάτω Χριστοῦ
παρουσίαν, καὶ λέγειν αὐτοῖς (ὡς κατόπιν βαίνων, καὶ ὁρῶν τινὰς εἰς
τραχείας ὁδοὺς κεκλικότας καὶ ἀφέντας τὴν εὐθεῖαν καὶ ἀληθινὴν, ὡς
εἰπεῖν) Ποῖ φέρεσθε, ποῖ βαδίζετε, οἱ τὴν τραχείαν ὁδὸν καὶ σκανδαλώδη
καὶ εἰς χάσμα φέρουσαν βαδίζοντες; ἀνακάμψατε. Οὐκ ἔστιν οὕτως, οὐκ
ἔστιν ἀπὸ Μαρίας μόνον ὁ Θεὸς λόγος, ὁ ἐκ πατρὸς ἄνωθεν
γεγεννημένος.—_Epiphan. adv. Hæreses_, Hær. 49 vel 69. § 23. Op.
Petav. Colon. 1682, vol. ii. pp. 746, 747.

Footnote 121:

Jewish Testimonies, I., Works: Kippis’s ed. 4to. vol. iii. p. 484.

Footnote 122:

Acts xxi. 20. Wall’s Preface to Critical Notes on the N. T. p. 12.

Footnote 123:

Hæres. 29, § 9, as cited by Jones, Part II., ch. 25, and by Dr.
Tattershall, p. 89.

Footnote 124:

Hæres. 30, § 13, as cited by Jones, Part II. ch. 25, and by Dr.
Tattershall, p. 89.

Footnote 125:

Matt. ii. 15.

Footnote 126:

Matt. ii. 23.

Footnote 127:

Catal. vir. illust. in Matth. Giving Jones’s translation, I do not
think it necessary to quote the original Latin. See Jones on the
Canon, Part II. ch. 25.

Footnote 128:

Hær. 30, § 13, quoted by Jones, Part II. ch. 25.

Footnote 129:

Ibid.

Footnote 130:

See Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das N. T. I., § 8; Leipzig, 1820.

Footnote 131:

Einleitung in das N. T., I., § 8, 31; Leipzig, 1820. See also
Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, by Andrews Norton, Note
A. sec. V. i. Boston, U. S., 1837.

Footnote 132:

There is a misprint in Dr. T.’s note, p. 104. The sentence at the end
of the third paragraph should close thus: “nine months _after_ that
event, on one calculation, or three months _before_ it, on the other.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE III.

CHRISTIANITY NOT THE PROPERTY OF CRITICS AND SCHOLARS;
BUT THE GIFT OF GOD TO ALL MEN.

BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.

“FOR GOD WHO COMMANDED THE LIGHT TO SHINE OUT OF DARKNESS, HATH SHINED
IN OUR HEARTS, TO GIVE THE LIGHT OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GLORY OF GOD
IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST.”

2 _Cor._ iv. 6.

No fact can be more extraordinary than that a Revelation from God should
give rise to endless disputes among men, that “light” should produce the
effects of “darkness,” causing confusion and doubt. A Revelation in
which nothing is revealed! A Revelation that occasions the most bitter
controversies upon every question and interest it embraces! A Revelation
that perplexes mankind with the most uncertain speculations, and splits
the body of believers into sects and divisions too numerous to be told!
A Revelation in which nothing is fixed, in which every point is debated
and disputed from the character of God to the character of sin! A
Revelation which is so little of a Revelation, that after nearly two
thousand years the world is wrangling about what it means: this surely
is a fact that demands an explanation, which should make the Believer
pause and ask whether he may not be guilty, by some dogmatism about what
he calls essentials, of casting this discredit upon Revelation, making
the very word a mockery to the Unbeliever, who inquires in simplicity
“what is _revealed_? I find you disputing about everything and agreeing
about nothing;” and to whom the Believer is certainly bound to render an
account of this strange state of things, before he condemns his
infidelity. Can any two ideas be more opposed, more directly
inconsistent, than Christianity considered as a Revelation, a gift of
LIGHT from God, and Christianity as it exists in the world—the most dark
and perplexed, the most vexed and agitated of all subjects, no two
parties agreeing where the light is, or what the light is, or who has
it? Surely if Christianity is a Revelation, the things it has _revealed_
must constitute the essence of the Revelation, and not the things which
it has left _unrevealed_. Surely the illumination from God must be in
the clear Truths communicated, and not in the doubtful controversies
excited. Surely it is a mockery of words to call that a Revelation upon
which there is no agreement even among those who accept the Revelation.
A Revelation is a certainty, and not an uncertainty: and therefore we
must strike out of the class of revealed truths every doctrine that is
disputed among Christians. Many of these doctrines we may possess other
and natural means of determining; but it is clear that that which is so
far _unrevealed_ as to be constantly debated among believers themselves,
cannot yet be _revealed_ by God. Now the UNITY of God is not one of
these debated points. All Christians regard it as revealed; and
therefore _it_ remains as a part of the Revelation. But the doctrine of
the Trinity, an addition to the Unity, and as some think a mode of the
divine Unity, _is_ a disputed point; it does not manifest itself to all
believers; it does not make a part of the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; Christ’s life would teach no
man that there are three persons in the Godhead—neither would Christ’s
words; the doctrine is not anywhere stated in Scripture; it is deduced
by a process of fallible reasonings from a number of unconnected texts,
doubtful both in their criticism and in their interpretation; it is not
a declaration made by God, but an inference drawn by man, and, as many
think, incorrectly drawn; the doctrine of the Trinity therefore, whether
true or not, cannot be regarded as a _revealed_ Truth; what is still a
subject of controversy cannot be a portion of Revelation. If then,
turning away from our disputes, we could ascertain the universal ideas
which Christianity implants in _all_ minds which receive it; the images
of God, of Duty, and of Hope, which it deposits in _all_ hearts; the
impression of Christ taken off by every spirit of man from the Image and
Son of God;—these would be the essentials of the Revelation, for since
these are the only uniform impressions that Christianity has actually
made upon those who believe it, we must suppose that these were the
chief impressions which God intended it to make. This alone can be “the
light which, coming into the world, lighteth every man.”

But I may be answered here, that Christianity itself is a matter of
debate, and that if doubtful things cannot be revealed, then
Christianity itself is not a Revelation. To this I reply, that
Christianity is a matter of debate chiefly because Christ himself is not
offered to the hearts of men, because controversialists thrust forward
their own doctrinal conceptions as the essentials of Christianity,
presenting _themselves_, and not Jesus to make his own impression on the
heart. If not creeds, but Jesus the Christ was offered spiritually to
the souls of men, unbelief would be soon no more. No earnest and pure
mind would reject from its love and faith the serene and perfect image
of the living Jesus. Men can deny metaphysical doctrines: but they could
not deny the spiritual Christ. The spirit of God in every man would bear
witness to _him_ who was the fulness of that spirit, and would recognize
the heavenly leadership of the Son of God. If the essentials of
Christianity had not been made by Divines and Theologians to consist in
disputed doctrines, if it had been offered to faith on the ground of its
inherent excellence, its ample attractions for our spiritual nature, how
readily, how universally would it have been received by all who felt
that it had echoes within the soul, and that Jesus was indeed the
brightest image of God, and the very ideal of humanity! Who would not be
a Christian, if to be a Christian required faith only in such truths as
these:—that the holy and affectionate Jesus was the human image of the
mind of God, and that the Universal Father is more perfect and more
tender than his holy and gentle child, by as much as Deity transcends
humanity; that the character of the Christ is God’s aim and purpose for
us all, the result at which He desires each of us to arrive through the
discipline and sufferings of earth;—that traces of Immortality were upon
that heavenly mind; that his profound sympathy with the Spirit of God,
the surrender of his own immediate interests for the sake of the
purposes and drift of providence, the identification of himself with the
will of God, the constant manifestation of a style of thought and action
drawn on a wider scale than this present life, and that placed him in
harmony with better worlds,—that these marked him out as a being whose
nature was adjusted to more glorious scenes, whose soul was out of
proportion to his merely earthly and external lot, and whose appropriate
home must be the pure Heaven of God? Would any one refuse admission to
these spiritual views as they are given off to our souls from the pure
life of Jesus, if he was permitted to receive them from Christ himself,
and not obliged on his way to that Heavenly Image of grace, liberty, and
truth, to stoop his free neck to the yoke of Churches and of Creeds? But
men preach themselves, not Christ. They embody their own conceptions of
Christianity in formulas, and pronounce these to be essentials, instead
of suffering Jesus to make his way to the heart, and stamp there his own
impression. Hence the origin of unbelief. I quote the words of an
eminent Unitarian, himself converted from orthodoxy chiefly by the force
of the argument I am about to state: “Settle your disputes (says the
unbeliever), and then I will listen to your arguments in defence of
Christianity. Both of you, Romanists and Protestants, offer me salvation
on condition that I embrace the Christian faith. You offer me a
sovereign remedy, which is to preserve me alive in happiness through all
eternity; but I hear you accusing each other of recommending to the
world, not a remedy but a _poison_; a poison, indeed, which, instead of
securing eternal happiness, must add bitterness to eternal punishment.
You both agree that it is of the _essence_ of Christianity to accept
certain doctrines concerning the manner in which the Divine Nature
exists; the moral and intellectual condition in which man was created;
our present degradation through the misconduct of our first parents: the
nature of sin, and the impossibility of its being pardoned except by
pain inflicted on an innocent person; the existence or non-existence of
living representatives of Christ and his apostles; a church which
enjoys, collectively, some extraordinary privileges in regard to the
visible and invisible world; the presence of Christ among us by means of
transubstantiation, or the denial of such presence; all this, and much
more, some of you declare to be contained in, and others to be opposed
to, the Scriptures; and even here, there is a fierce contention as to
whether those Scriptures embrace the whole of that Christianity which is
necessary for salvation, or whether tradition is to fill up a certain
gap. I am, therefore, at a loss how to account for the invitation you
give me. To me (the unbeliever might continue) it is quite evident that
the ablest opponents of Christianity never discovered a more convincing
argument against REVELATION in general, than that which inevitably
arises from your own statements, and from the controversies of your
churches. God (you both agree), pitying mankind, has disregarded the
natural laws fixed by himself, and for a space of four thousand years,
and more, has multiplied miracles for the purpose of acquainting men
with the means of obtaining salvation, and avoiding eternal death,
_eternal death_ signifying almost universally, among you, _unending
torments_. But when I turn to examine the result of this (as you deem
it) _miraculous and all-wise plan_, I find it absolutely incomplete; for
the whole Christian world has been eighteen centuries in a perpetual
warfare (not without great shedding of blood), because Christians cannot
settle what is that faith which alone can save us. Have you not thus
demonstrated that the revelation of which you boast cannot be from God?
Do you believe, and do you wish me to believe, that when God had decreed
to make a _saving truth_ known to the world, he failed of that object,
or wished to make Revelation a snare?”[133]

Now not believing that Revelation has failed of its object, or that it
is a snare, and believing that under all the so-called Essentials, which
we regard as mere human additions, there is yet a true and universal
impression received from the spirit of Jesus, believing, in fact, that
our Controversies are about accidentals, and that under all our
differences there is, deeper down, the untroubled well of Christ
springing up into everlasting life, I would proceed to expose those
errors in the Trinitarian conception of Revelation which have laid it
open to the charge of _not being a Revelation_, of dividing mankind by
Controversies instead of uniting them by moral Certainty,—and to
contrast this Trinitarian Conception of Revelation with what, for the
following reasons, we hold to be the _true one_; because it represents
God as accomplishing what, from the very nature of a Revelation, he must
have intended to accomplish, namely, the communication of moral and
spiritual knowledge: because it removes the materials for doctrinal
strife and controversial rancour which never could have been God’s
object in sending a Revelation, but which are inseparable from
Trinitarian ideas of Revelation; and because it would realize that union
for which Christ prayed and Apostles intreated, a moral oneness with God
as revealed in Jesus, a unity _of spirit_ in the bond of peace.

Let us suppose, then, God having the design to send a Revelation to
Mankind. There are two methods, either of which He might adopt in the
execution of that intention. He might send them a written Revelation in
the form of a Book: or He might send them a living Revelation in the
form of a Man. He might announce to them His Will through _words_: or He
might send to them _one of like nature with themselves_, who would
actually work the Will of God before their eyes; one who, passing
through their circumstances of life and death, would show them in his
own person the character which God intended this present discipline to
create; and who, appearing again after death, morally unchanged, and
passing into the Heavens, would reveal to them, by these his own
destinies, the unbroken spiritual connection of the present with the
future, and the immortal home which God has with Himself for the spirits
of those holy ones who are no more on Earth. In the first case, then, we
suppose God to send a verbal Message to men, a communication by words
teaching doctrines, spoken first, and afterwards committed to writing:
in the second case we suppose that a pure and heavenly being,
manifesting the will and purposes of God through his own nature, which
is also our nature, is _himself the divine Message_ from our Father; one
who walks this earth amidst our sorrows and our sins,—transfiguring the
one and reclaiming the other—and gathering up into his own soul the
strength that is to be derived from both; who enters our dwellings,
sheds through them the divine light of heavenly love, plants the hope of
immortality in the midst of trembling, because loving and dying, beings,
and binds together the perishing children of Earth in the godlike Trust
of imperishable affections which Death can glorify but cannot kill; who
places himself in our circumstances of severest trial, and shows us the
energy of a filial heart, and the unquenchable brightness of a spirit in
prayerful communion with the God of Providence; who, that he might be a
revelation of a heavenly mind amidst every variety of temptation, passed
on his way to death through rudest insults, and showed how awful a thing
is moral greatness, how calm, how majestic, how inaccessible, how it
shines out through aggressive coarseness, a mental and ineffaceable
serenity, a spirit that has its glory in itself, and cannot be
touched;—who, having showed man how to live and to suffer, next showed
him how to die;—who in the spirit and power of Duty subdued this garment
of throbbing flesh to the will of God, and in the death agonies was
self-forgetful enough to look down from the cross in the tenderest
foresight for those he left behind, and to look up to Heaven, presenting
for his murderers the only excuse that heavenly pity could
suggest,—“Father forgive them! they know not what they do;”—and who
having thus glorified God upon the earth, and finished the work given
him to do, was himself glorified by God; taken to that Heaven which is
the home of goodness;—thus showing the issues to which God conducts the
tried and perfected spirit, that His Faithfulness is bound up with the
destinies of those that trust Him, and that His providence is the
recompense of the just, who live now by Faith.

Now the first thing that will strike you in comparing these two possible
methods of a Revelation is, that the written communication containing
doctrines is cold, formal, indistinct and distant, when contrasted with
the living presence of a pure and heavenly being, who places himself at
our side, enters into our joys and sorrows, shows us in action and in
suffering the will of God reflected on every form of life, and works out
before our eyes the vast idea of perfection. No message, no written
document, no form of words, could leave such distinct impressions or
quicken such sympathy and love, as the warm and breathing spirit who
entered into communication with us, whose influences we felt upon our
trembling souls, whose eye penetrated and whose voice melted us, and who
took us by the hand and showed us how children of God should prove their
filial claim, and through the vicissitudes of a Father’s providence pass
meekly to their Home.

Such a living Revelation could of course be preserved for _posterity_
only through the medium of written records, but then these records would
be chiefly descriptive; and their grand purpose would be faithfully to
convey to the men of other times the true image of that heavenly being;
to re-create him, from age to age, in the heart of life; to introduce
the Son of God with the power of reality into the business and the
bosoms of men; to impress upon the silent page such graphic characters
that they give off to the mind animated scenes, and bring the living
Christ before the gazing eye; and the written Revelation would perfectly
fulfil its mission, when by vivid and faithful narrative, without
comment or reflection of its own, it had placed us in the presence of
Jesus, and left us, like the disciples of old, to collect our
impressions of the Christ as we waited upon his steps, and watched the
spirit working into life, and caught the tones of living emotion; when
we walked with him through the villages of Galilee, and saw him arrest
the mourners, and touch the bier, and restore the only son of the
widowed mother; when we retired with him to the lone mountain, and
witnessed how the spirit ascended to God before it entered into the
conflicts of temptation; when we stood with him in the Temple Court, and
beheld how much more noble than the Temple is the Spirit that sanctifies
the Temple, and how the Priest in his strong hold quailed and trembled
under the thrilling tones and simple majesty of Truth; when we followed
him to his home, not neglecting to observe how his eye, that was never
cold to goodness, fell upon the widow and her mite as he left the
Temple; when we leaned with the loved disciple on his bosom, and watched
his last offices, and listened, with hushed hearts, for his last words;
when we saw him kneel at the disciples’ feet, that the spirit of
equality and brotherhood might enter into their hearts; and break the
bread of remembrance and distribute the parting cup,—that bound up with
such symbols of self-sacrifice, he, the living Christ, might come back
in moments of severe Duty, and pour his own spirit of self-denial
through deathless memories; when we listened to his last prayers and
consolations, and observed that, in that awful pause between life and
death, he was the comforter; when we watched with him in Gethsemane’s
garden, and beheld the tears of nature, the holy one and the just,
beneath the awe of his mission, trembling and melted before God; when we
stood by him in Pilate’s hall, and saw the moral greatness of the
unassailable spirit unobscured by bitterest humiliation; when we drew
nigh to his cross, and witnessed the crown placed upon a glory that in
mortal form could rise no higher—“It is finished.” To place us by its
vivid descriptions in such communication with Jesus himself, is the
great purpose of the historical record of Christianity; and in
proportion as it makes this intercourse real and intimate, does the New
Testament become to us the instrument and vehicle of a Revelation.
Without this reproduction in our hearts of Jesus, the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever, the Scriptures are but a dead letter, barren
symbols, perverted to mere verbal and logical uses, that awake no life,
and serve no spiritual purpose.

The next observation that could not fail to strike you in contrasting
the two methods of Revelation which I have supposed, a written
communication containing doctrines, and a living character representing
the will of God, is the great uncertainty and liability to _various_
interpretations of the written method of Revelation when compared with
the acted Revelation, the will of God embodied in Christ Jesus. Nothing
is so unfixed as the meaning of words; nothing is so fixed as the
meaning of actions. Nothing is so vague as language; nothing is so
definite as character. You may fail to collect the exact ideas of a
written communication; but you _cannot fail to understand_ a living,
feeling, acting, suffering, and dying man, who, on his own person, works
out the will of God before your eyes; and, instead of communicating with
you through writing, communicates with you through a character that can
have no two meanings, and that requires no doubtful application of
scientific rules of interpretation to make it plain. Place me in the
presence of Christ, and the Revelation is impressing itself on my
answering heart, and exhibiting itself before my living eyes. Place me
before some lengthened statement in words, and I may draw from them a
variety of senses, and perhaps fix upon, as their true sense, one that
their Author did not intend. Who will protect me from error in all my
applications of the difficult science of interpreting words? How, for
instance, shall I be certain that I do not impress my own limited
conceptions upon the most solemn and inspired language? How shall I rise
through words, which are mere symbols, to conceptions, which, not being
in my own soul, mere words do not suggest? If I saw a living being
embodying these sublime conceptions before me, or read a description of
him that brought him vividly before the soul, then the words would be no
longer clothed with my poor meanings, but would bring before me the
living forms of goodness and of greatness into which they expanded when
represented by that heavenly mind. To illustrate my meaning by a single
instance: Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” Now how poor would be my
conception of that duty, if I had only these words, if I had not his own
acted interpretations of their fulness, if I could not stand by his
cross, and witness his own exhibition of this heavenly spirit. The
precept would be narrowed to my own littleness if I had not the
illustration of the living Christ. It is possible to put a limitation
upon the revelation of mercy as it is written in the dead words: it is
not possible to put any limitation on “the word made flesh,” the
Revelation of Mercy breathing from the dying Jesus. Such then is the
greater clearness, and freedom from uncertainty, of the meaning of God,
when that meaning is revealed on the person of a living being, than when
it is a statement of Doctrines expressed through a medium so indefinite,
so susceptible of a variety of interpretations, as written language.

That there is a distinct branch of study called the Art of
Interpretation; that its principles are derived from the profoundest
acquaintance with the Mind; that it is in fact a practical Metaphysics,
which even, when most fully understood, requires, for its correct
application to ancient writings, the most varied and extensive
knowledge, and the utmost natural acuteness, disciplined by long
practice,—these things, which every one knows, scholar or no scholar,
are standing and undeniable proofs of the inherent ambiguity of
language, of the variety of meanings, which no skill in the use of words
can possibly prevent, and out of which we have to make a selection of
some one, when we apply ourselves to interpret a document. Now were I to
enter into a full enumeration of the considerations that should
determine an interpreter of the New Testament, and out of all the
possible meanings direct his selection of that one which he adopts, I
should have to present you with a disquisition on perhaps the most
profound and difficult department of literary inquiry. I should have to
speak of Archæology and original languages, themselves even in their
most general character, the study of a life; I should have to speak of
one form of those original languages, peculiar and a study in itself,
the Hellenistic Greek, in which the New Testament is written, and in the
interpretation of which we are left without the aid that is derived from
the usages of language by other authors: I should have to speak of the
particular writer whose words we were examining, of the character of his
mind, of the peculiarities of his style, whether he wrote oratorically
or scientifically, whether we were to tame down his metaphors, or
whether we were to regard them as literally descriptive; I should have
to speak of the age and country in which he lived, of the state of
opinion and philosophy in his times, of the colourings which his words
or thoughts were likely to adopt from the then prevailing theories, of
the particular purpose for which he was writing, and of the particular
minds, their circumstances and states of knowledge to which the writing
was addressed; and after all this I could not allow any man, however
erudite, to be a competent Interpreter who was not richly endowed with
that noble but most rare Faculty which can re-create the past and place
us in the heart of a by-gone world, that Historic Imagination which
throws itself into the sympathies of Antiquity and re-produces the
living forms of Society that kindled the very thoughts and modified the
very language now submitted to our minds; and in addition to all this I
should demand, also, as an essential requisite for an Interpreter, a
mind emptied of all prejudice, a calm and sound judgment.

Now it is most evident that a result depending on so many qualifications
will be necessarily uncertain; that in every separate man who comes to
the study of the New Testament, according as these instruments of
interpretation exist in different degrees of perfection will they derive
various meanings from the written document; and that consequently, since
nowhere do these requisites for a perfect interpretation exist in
perfection, there is no one of the contested meanings that can be relied
upon with an absolute confidence. It is also to be noticed, that this
uncertainty attending the meaning of words does not attach to the
_narrative_ or _historical_ portion of a document, but is very much
confined to that portion of it which contains doctrinal ideas,
philosophical theories, or metaphysical statements. The descriptive
portion of an ancient writing (and especially when, as in the case of
Christ, the description is of a moral nature, and is addressed to the
affections and the soul, which are the same in all ages,) will convey a
uniform and universal impression, whilst the didactic portion of the
very same writing will suggest as many meanings as there are varieties
of intellectual texture and complexion in the minds that read it. The
character of Jesus shines out from the Gospels to be seen of all men,
full of grace and truth. No one mistakes that. It does not depend upon
the skilful application of the science of Interpretation. The symbols of
language that reveal the living Jesus are of universal significance, and
finding their way at once to every heart, stamp upon it a faithful image
of the Christ. But doctrinal conceptions cannot be conveyed in this way:
there is no universal and unchanging language for metaphysical ideas—and
consequently it is impossible that any written communication on such
subjects should be free from a variety of interpretations. And
especially must this be so, when, as is the case with the Trinity, the
doctrine is nowhere expressly stated in the document, but is only
inferred by connecting together into a system a number of ideas which it
seems to contain. Let me give you an illustration that was lately
brought before me of the impossibility of a Revelation of doctrines
being made to man, by means of written language, upon such subjects as
the Trinity, the modes in which the essence of the Deity enables him
personally to subsist. I heard it stated on a late occasion by Dr.
Tattershall, that the Trinity existed as one nature in three
personalities; and that to ask how three could be one and one three, was
to ask an unmeaning and irrelevant question, because that the Trinity
was three and one in different senses, three in Person but one in
Essence. I turn now to Dr. Sherlock, and I find these words: “To say,”
says Dr. William Sherlock, “that there are three divine persons, and not
three distinct infinite minds, is both heresy and nonsense.” “The
distinction of persons cannot be more truly and aptly represented than
by the distinction between three men; for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
are as really distinct persons as Peter, James, and John.” Here then we
have Dr. Tattershall charging Sherlock with polytheism; and we have
Sherlock charging Dr. Tattershall with Heresy and nonsense. That is,
neither of these Trinitarians regards the other as having the true
faith. Is it not evident then, that the doctrine of the Trinity, seeing
how Trinitarians themselves charge one another with heresy, cannot be a
doctrine of _Revelation_, cannot be a part of that universal Gospel
which was preached to the poor, and revealed unto babes?

It was stated in Christ Church, by the Rev. Mr. Byrth, that the
controversy between us was solely a question of Interpretation. It is
so, because in the case cited, our dispute is about doctrines. The
question of _Unitarianism_ or _Trinitarianism_ must be decided by
Interpretation after Criticism has fixed the Text to be interpreted; but
I deny, altogether, that the question of _Christianity_ or
_No-Christianity_ is to be decided by any such imperfect and doubtful
instrument. Though no one honours Scholarship more, or has a profounder
veneration for its noble functions, and altogether renouncing the
vulgarity of depreciating its high offices, and maintaining, wherever I
have influence, especially for our own Church and in our own day, the
necessity for a learned Ministry, able to refresh their souls at the
original wells and unfrighted by confident dogmatism to give a reason
for the faith that is in them, I yet declare, that Christianity is a
religion for the people; that the Gospel was originally preached to the
poor; that Christ is manifested to the heart and soul of every man whom
he attracts by heavenly sympathy; that when not many wise, not many
learned were called, the lowly but honest in heart, recognized the
divine brightness, and sat at the feet of Jesus docile and rejoicing;
and I protest altogether against any learned Aristocracy, any literary
Hierarchy, any priestly Mediators, having more of the true light that
lighteth every man than the humblest of their brethren, who has taken to
his heart the free gift of God, and loves the Lord Jesus with sincerity.

Now, strange to say this principle was broadly admitted. It was broadly
admitted that Christianity is not the property of scholars or critics,
but the gift of God to all men; and yet, with a remarkable
inconsistency, it was added, that “the all men” to whom Christianity is
the gift of God, must find in it the doctrine of the Trinity, else they
are no Christians at all. That is, Christianity is the gift of God to
those who, by the aids of interpretation and criticism, become
Trinitarians, and to all those who, following their leaders, accept this
doctrine; but is not the gift of God to Unitarians, who, though loving
Jesus as their Light on Earth and their Forerunner amid the skies,
cannot so read either the written Gospel or the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, as to collect from them
the doctrine of a Trinity. If Trinitarianism is Christianity
exclusively, then Christianity _is not_ the gift of God to all men; for
many, in all ages of the Church and in the first century, perhaps,
without exception, have accepted Christ, but knew no Trinity. If
Trinitarianism is Christianity exclusively, then Christianity is the
property of critics and scholars, for that doctrine is not a
self-evidencing Truth, it does not shine out from the Gospels so that no
honest mind and pure heart can fail to receive it, and, if capable of
being proved at all, it can only be proved by a most technical and
subtle logic, by far-fetched inferences from disconnected texts, every
one of which is open to a hostile criticism, and by a most scholastic
and indirect system of interpretation, which is a task, and that a most
painful one, for plain men to comprehend. My audience will be enabled to
judge of this matter for themselves when I tell them that one of the
strongest reliances of modern Trinitarians, until proved to be
completely fallacious, was the power of the Greek article; and that one
of the texts long used in this controversy, and still used,[134] owes
its whole importance to an accident so minute as this, whether the
letter O was written with a central dot, or without the dot; so that the
chance touch of a transcriber might put in or put out one of the
principal proofs of the doctrine of the Trinity. Now I further declare,
that all the strongest evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity is
exactly of the same critical nature—that the only text of the slightest
difficulty, cited in Christ Church on Wednesday evening, owes its whole
force to a question of punctuation; and that the best critics and
scholars, and they Trinitarians, for true scholars never degrade their
high calling, nor enter the solemn sanctuary open to them alone, to
falsify the oracle, give many authorities against the Trinitarian, and
in favour of the Unitarian, Interpretation.[135] Now will any man tell
me that the doctrine of the Trinity, which, if true, is the most awful
Truth that ever bowed down the heart, that the God of Heaven walked this
earth, a partaker of our sufferings and our sorrows, and lived our life,
and died our death, would be left to be proved by evidence of this
nature, by a controversy nearly two thousand years after the Revelation,
about the force of the Greek article and the punctuation of a Greek
manuscript? Is this the light that lighteth every man that cometh into
the world? There could have been no difficulty in revealing this
doctrine, in words at least, if it was intended to be revealed. The
Athanasian Creed is at least explicit enough, and leaves us in no doubt
of the purpose of its Author. Now I conclude that if Trinitarianism
alone is Christianity, and if such are the processes of criticism and
interpretation by which alone that doctrine can be proved, then
Trinitarianism _is the property of Critics and Scholars, and those who
implicitly trust them_; and Christianity requiring us either to be
Critics or to prostrate ourselves before Critics, not agreed among
themselves, is not the free “gift of God to all men.” The rightful
privileges of critics and scholars are large enough, and let no man
disown them; but I do disown this literary Hierarchy arrogating to
themselves sole access to the oracles of God, and limiting Christ’s free
approach to the souls of the people to long processes of inferential
reasoning and the winding ways of a syllogism. I entreat them to stand
aside, and let the living Jesus come into communication with the living
heart, and not place themselves, like the multitude who threatened the
blind beside the way, between the ready mercy of the Heavenly Teacher
and the humblest follower who seeks his face, that a ray of the light
that shineth there may fall upon eager and wistful, though dimmed and
earth-stained, eyes. “And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto
Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way-side begging. And hearing
the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that
Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus thou son of
David, have mercy on me. And they which went before rebuked him, that he
should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou son of David,
have mercy on me. And Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought unto
him: and when he was come near he asked him, saying, What wilt thou that
I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.
And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.”

I trust that you will perceive now the essential distinction between a
Revelation by words, of doctrines, and a Revelation by a living being;
between the uncertain meaning that is arrived at by the interpretation
of language, and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shining
on the face of Jesus Christ. In the one case we have a statement of
doubtful doctrines in written words; in the other we have a living
Character. In the one case we have the dead letter; in the other we have
the “word made flesh.” In the one case we have the Mind of God stated in
propositions; in the other we have the Image of God set up in our
hearts, and the purposes of God for man, both while on earth and beyond
the grave, realized before us, to be seen of all men. If Christianity is
a scheme of doctrines in a written communication from God, then of
course it is subject to all the necessary ambiguities of language; and
expositors will be busy upon it, to draw out of it all the meanings it
can possibly contain; and every fresh interpretation will be regarded by
some as part of the Revelation from Heaven, and never will men rest lest
there should be some lurking sense in it that they have not reached, and
every interpreter will thrust in the face of the world, _as the
essential and saving meaning_, his own reading of the document. And as
language is a thing that is never fixed, but is always gathering fresh
imports from the developments of Time, this is a process that must go on
for ever, and the document will speak a new Message to the men of every
age, and the Doctrines that constitute Salvation will be always the
subject matter of a controversy. But if Christianity, instead of a form
of written words, is a character sent to us by God, to manifest his will
in the flesh, and to reveal living Truth in a living being; if Jesus
himself is the record we are to study; if it is not an inspired Book but
an inspired Life that is the gift of God; if his works of Power and
Love, his actions and his sufferings, his holy living and dying, are the
full and spiritual Scriptures imprinted on humanity by God’s own hand,
then the whole work of a Christian is to understand and love that
Character,—then is the Revelation like a light shining in a dark place,
“a salvation prepared before the face of all people,” “a light to
lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of his people Israel,” a ray
of God’s light shining into the heart of man, touching the mountain tops
of humanity and piercing the deep valleys, that all flesh may see it
together.

It is in remarkable consistency with these views that very little is
said in the popular systems of Christ’s character. The doctrinal ideas
respecting Jesus are all in all: the moral and spiritual ideas are
looked upon as not peculiarly Christian. A vast deal is said about his
Rank, his Merits, his Mediatorial Distinction: very little is said about
his Life, his Example, his Revelations of Duty and of Destiny. The
Trinitarians taunt us with having no use for Christ in our system.
Certainly we believe in a God who does not require their Christ. We do
not speak of Atonement therefore. But we might retort, that if we
neglect their metaphysical Christ, they neglect our moral and spiritual
Christ. They speak little of his character, his life, his example, as a
model for humanity: nor could they in consistency with their system.
Jesus, as God and man, is powerless as an exhibition of what man may be.
He is no revelation of Humanity to Humanity. Humanity with Deity
attached to it, or indwelling, is Humanity no more.

If Christianity is a system of doctrines to be deduced from words, and
if our salvation depends upon the certainty of our deductions, then is
it not clear that God would be requiring an absolute Truth of
Interpretation which he has not given us the means of attaining, and
that the Revelation, even to “Critics and Scholars,” would be an
_uncertain property_? But if Christianity is an inspired Life, the
Duties and the Destinies of Man shown forth on the Son of God, the word
made flesh, the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, a
character perfectly reflecting the purposes of Providence, and preserved
for us, in faithful narratives that still enable us to have the image of
Jesus formed within us, then is it not clear that the Revelation is
perpetuated in our hearts, and that the Christ with us still, the same
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, is the gift of God to all men? “Lo,
I am with you always, to the end of the world.” Now this is Christ’s own
account of himself as a Revelation. “I am the Light of the world.” “I am
the Resurrection and the Life.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the
life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye had known me, ye
should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him and
have seen him.”[136] “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he
seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth
the Son likewise.”[137] “Whoso hath seen me hath seen the Father also.”
And to crown all this scriptural evidence, this is God’s own account of
his Christ as a Revelation, authenticating him at the opening of his
Mission, and repeated again as His seal upon its close, “This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

I have shown that there is no doctrinal certainty in Christianity
considered as a _written_ Revelation: but neither is there _any moral
certainty_ as to the Will of God and his practical requirements conveyed
by mere words. When God tells me in words to love Him and to love my
neighbour, I do not know what practical forms these feelings are to
assume, neither do I know how all the influences of my present life are
to control me in the exercise of these affections. But I understand what
God means when I see Jesus interpreting for me this will of God by his
own character, and combining in his own life, through all circumstances,
the perfect love of God and Man. Now I maintain, that no system of
Doctrine could be a Revelation to me of the purposes and ends of life.
It is a practical question, and practically must it be solved. He who
will work out for me on this scene of things the great designs of my
being, and show to me, in action and in suffering, in sympathy and in
struggle, in the throbbings of life and in the hushed sublimities of
death, the right attitudes of my nature, the fitting dignities of
enlightened and heaven-bound man,—he who is not the Prophet merely of
divine Truth but the Impersonator of his own views, who stands
successively in each practical position and robes himself in the living
glories of duty,—he alone can pretend to be a Revelation of character,
as God wills it, having stamped upon his views illustrations of Reality.
And he alone can pretend to have unravelled the mystery of our
Discipline, who himself passes through our trials, and transmutes them
into the nurseries of Power, the pregnant schools of Character—who shows
us the outward circumstance, as a torch to the Spirit, lighting up the
energies of Duty’s inviolable will,—who moves amid the evil that is in
the world, and is not overcome by it, but overcomes it with good,—who
encounters sin and sinners, and treats them with the pity of a brother,
yet with the holiness of one whose Father is the spiritual God,—who
stands amid baffled purposes of good, the broken projects of benevolence
in the unquelled trusts of Faith, seeing, though afar off, the Harvest
of this unpromising Spring,—in whom the worst aspects of Humanity only
draw out the unselfishness of Charity; and the clouded countenance of
God, veiled to sight though not to Faith, the perfect peace of a filial
Spirit. He who passes for us through all this variety of mortal
circumstance, and exhibits each, even the most dark and unpromising, as
full of the materials of our Education, contributing to the formation of
that perfect mind which is the end and heaven of our being, is indeed a
perfect Revelation, “unimproved and unimprovable,” though improving _us_
to the end of Time, an embodied Scripture, the word made flesh and
dwelling amongst us.

Christianity will be a matter of controversy so long as men look to it
for what they are _to think_, and not for what they are _to trust in and
be_. Creeds will divide the world, so long as Christianity is regarded
as a Revelation of Doctrines, and not as a Revelation of Character, of
Practical Interests, of Destinies and of Duties. In the one case it will
be the “property of Critics and Scholars,” held by an uncertain tenure;
in the other case, it will be “the gift of God to all men.” Strange that
all Protestants do not feel the force of this argument! And as for Roman
Catholics, if we had any controversy with them, the argument has only to
take another step to hold them too in its grasp.

And now I shall be obliged to speak of Critics and Scholars in a way
that Critics and Scholars should never expose themselves to be spoken
of. I have a most painful duty before me, very different from the one I
had been led to expect,—which I had hoped would have been to answer
calm, learned, judicious reasonings, instead of simply to resist
pretension, a task, which if much easier, is yet one that neither
elevates nor instructs. Nothing could justify me in using in this place
the language of grave remonstrance, but the consciousness that thereby
instead of indulging I am wounding my own feelings, and the conviction
that, in this case, Duty to Truth and to the Public requires it from me.
Every one must have felt that the declaration before the world, of “the
Unitarian Interpretation of the New Testament, based upon defective
Scholarship, or on dishonest or uncandid criticism,” ought to have been
amply supported, or never made. To fail in the proof was to pass not
only intellectual but the severest _moral_ condemnation on such a
statement. I know of no abuse of Power and Place more immoral, than when
a Scholar uses his Scholarship to libel others before the unlearned,
than when a Preacher uses his sacred and elevated standing to make
assertions that are taken upon his word, but which are not correct, and
of which nothing but the _certainty_ that they were correct could
justify the utterance. If I cannot take example from what I witnessed in
Christ Church on Wednesday evening, let me at least take warning. I will
not pray to be preserved meek and truthful, and then regard my prayer as
an indemnity for unlicensed speech. I will not commit here the
disrespectful impropriety of quoting Greek. Neither will I pay this
audience the false compliment of pretending to make such subjects
intelligible and interesting to them, but I will make some statements
that shall go forth to the world, and there find fitting judgment. There
are some points, however, to which I shall have to advert, of which
every one may judge.

1. It was stated by the Preacher that he could not himself believe the
mysterious statements of the New Testament unless he first believed in
their inspiration, and that this alone could command his faith. Now
there was great candour in this, but no Scholarship. You cannot prove
the Inspiration of the Bible except by first proving the truth of the
Bible, for there are no proofs of Inspiration except what the Bible
itself contains. To believe in the truth of the Bible, because it is
inspired, and then to prove it inspired because it is true, is an error
in reasoning inexcusable in the divines of the Church of England, for an
eminent Bishop of their own Church, Bishop Marsh, has abundantly exposed
it.

2. It was stated that every Unitarian Minister in England was as much
bound by the Improved Version, as every Clergyman of the Establishment
was by the Articles of the Church. The Preacher has written his name
beneath those Articles; as long as he remains in the Church he has, to
use Milton’s expression, to those Articles subscribed “Slave;” he has
entered into a vow to preach nothing contrary to them; he belongs to a
body of men organized to prevent all dissent from those Articles, and
pledged to oppose and avenge every attempt to break up the dogmatical
principle of their Church Union, and yet he stated solemnly before an
assembled multitude that no Clergyman of the Church was more bound by
the Articles of the Church than was every Unitarian Minister by a Book
which one man edited on his sole literary responsibility, and which
other men contributed to publish, simply because they expected from it
some valuable scriptural aid. Now when a man is capable of making such a
statement, when his judgment will allow him to do so, his credibility as
a witness to facts I do not dispute, but _his opinion_ on any question,
merely as coming from him, I cannot feel deserving of my confidence. I
might quote passages of contemporary Unitarian criticism reflecting on
the Improved Version; I might quote Dr. Carpenter in his answer to
Archbishop Magee, ascribing the whole responsibility to Mr. Belsham; I
might quote Mr. Yates in his able answer to Mr. Wardlaw, exposing the
false impression made by Dr. Magee, that the Improved Version was the
Unitarian Version: but I cannot so misuse your time. The Unitarians,
most of whom never saw the work, and whose pride it is that their
Ministers study the Scriptures freely, and lay before them the results,
will smile at the idea of these Ministers being as much bound by the
Improved Version as the Clergy by the Articles of the Church, though in
a graver spirit they must morally condemn an assertion so recklessly
made. It was stated that all Protestant Christians were satisfied with
the received Version up to the time of the Improved Version, and, to
advance no other proof of the ignorance displayed by such a statement,
in the next breath it was declared that the Improved Version was on the
basis of Archbishop Newcome’s Translation, the title of which is this,
“An Attempt towards revising our English Translation of the Greek
Scriptures.” But what means this attempt to fasten us down to the
Improved Version? Is it not clear that these clergymen wish us to fight
the battle upon a disadvantageous ground? Is it not clear that they wish
us to take up some weak position, and defend that, rather than meet us
in the strongest positions that criticism and scholarship enable us to
assume and to maintain? Is not our controversy between Unitarianism and
Trinitarianism, and what can be more unworthy of critics and scholars
than to conduct that controversy on any ground but that of the original
Scriptures? We do not think of fixing _them_ down to any particular
critic of their own church, many of whom we could advance who abandon
almost every position they maintain; we freely give them advantage of
the best criticism and the best scholarship they can anywhere obtain;
and we do confess that we hold it very uncandid towards us, and very
unconfiding in their own strength, and very disloyal towards Truth, to
tell opponents, I wish I could say fellow inquirers, that they are not
to defend their cause by the best arguments known to them, but by a
certain set of arguments published in a certain book more than thirty
years ago, and before some of _us_ now engaged in this controversy were
born. Our controversy is not about the Improved Version, but about the
Greek Testament; and I must certainly regard any attempt to intercept us
in our appeal to the original Scripture, by thrusting any other Version
in our faces, as a sign either of great weakness or of great unfairness.
Where would the Lecturers at Christ Church have got matter of indictment
against us, if it had not been for this Improved Version?

3. It was stated that minute examination of the Scripture Evidence for
Trinitarianism hardly influenced the result, for so thoroughly were the
Scriptures imbued with its doctrines, that if but a fragment of them
remained, the mysterious truths that pervade the whole would be found in
that fragment. Now I doubt not that men can say these things sincerely,
and yet methinks they ought to ask themselves before they mislead a
multitude, is there Reality in these statements? Now I can not only
mention fragments, but whole books, in which Trinitarians themselves
will confess that there is not a trace of these doctrines; the whole
Gospel of St. Mark; the whole Gospel of St. Luke, for the portions
respecting the miraculous generation cannot be proof of the Deity of the
person so generated; the whole of the book of Acts; and very many of the
Epistles. We have the Gospel which the Apostle Peter delivered to the
Gentiles, when he gave them his exposition of Christianity, and we find
from it that Cornelius and the Gentiles might have believed _all_ that
the Apostle taught them, and yet, according to the Trinitarians, be lost
everlastingly from the scantiness of their faith. Here then is the
Gospel which Peter delivered to the Gentiles, containing the whole
account he gave them of the doctrine of Christ: “Then Peter opened his
mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh
righteousness, is accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the
children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of
all:) That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all
Judæa, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached;
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power:
who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed by the
devil; for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he
did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem: whom they slew and
hanged on a tree: Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him
openly: not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God,
even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.
And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is
he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To him
give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth
in him shall receive remission of sins.”[138] Now you will know what
weight, what measure of calm and considerate truth attach to the
assertions made at Christ Church, when you compare this account of
Christianity by the Apostle Peter, with the bold statement that if only
a fragment of the New Testament remained, it would contain and show
forth the mysterious doctrines of Trinitarianism.

4. It was stated that a slight degree of evidence might affect the
introductory chapters of Matthew and Luke, if the statements they
contain were not supported by the rest of the Gospels, but that so full
were the Gospels of the peculiarities of these chapters, to remove them
would be like removing the Portico from a Temple. The only evidence
brought to support this large declaration was the last verse of the
Gospel of St. Matthew, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of
the world.” Now I am not concerned in the correctness or the
incorrectness of the Improved Version’s translation of this passage, Lo,
I am with you alway, to the end of the age, or dispensation, that is,
till the new dispensation was fully established: for in the first place
I have no difficulty in believing that the spirit and power of Jesus was
with his followers when in the strength of love and trust they lived and
died for him and for his truth, and that thus spiritually he still is
with all who give him a place in their hearts, even unto the end of the
world; and, in the second place, translate this passage in any way you
will, and it contains no assertion of the Deity of Jesus, and no
confirmation of the miraculous conception. But when I hear it
confidently asserted in the presence of a crowd ready to take the
Preacher’s word for anything he chooses to assert about Greek, that
_any_ scholarship is utterly contemptible that interprets the “end of
the world” to mean “the end of the era or age,” or that puts any other
interpretation on these words than that of the received version, I
confess I am amazed at the boldness with which men not habitually under
correction will make rash statements, even at times when they must know
that watchful eyes are upon them. I turn to Schleusner’s Lexicon of the
New Testament, I look for the word in question, and I find from that
authority that the word signifies primarily, an undefined period of
considerable extent, and, secondarily, the state of things existing
within that period; I find him quoting the very passage in question
which we are told _every scholar_ would translate “to the end of the
_world_,” and explaining it to mean “to the end of the lives” of the
Apostles; I find that in other cases where this word is used, a limit is
put upon its meaning, restricting it to the signification of “age or
dispensation,” and rendering it impossible it should mean the “end of
the world,” in our sense, by such a clause as this, “Verily I say unto
you, _this generation_ shall not pass until all these things be
fulfilled;”[139] I find in our common version the plural[140] of this
word translated exactly as the singular, where if “dispensations” was
substituted for “world,”[141] all difficulty would disappear; I find the
interpretation of the Improved Version given by such scholars as Hammond
and Le Clerc, and adopted consistently and throughout by Bishop Pearce,
who argues for it against the common rendering, and whether it is true
or not, which is really a matter of no importance, I do calmly but
solemnly protest against any man so abusing his actual place and his
reputation for learning, as to proclaim to a multitude that no scholar
would countenance such a translation, and that no interpreter would
adopt it, except for the sake of an _à priori_ meaning. No man who
understood the dignity and the privileges of scholars would in this way
forfeit them.[142]

5. It was stated that _no scholar_ would translate the first verse of
the Gospel of St. John thus: “In the beginning was the word, and the
word was with God, and the word was a God.”[143] Now for myself I do not
agree with this translation. I think that the Logos, or Word, is a very
usual personification of the Power and Wisdom of God. (See Prov. viii.)
I think that this verse has no reference to Jesus whatsoever; that in
the first place God alone is spoken of; his Power and Wisdom are
described as belonging to and dwelling with him; that He is described as
purposing to communicate or reveal these to men, for of course it is not
God himself, but only a portion of his Knowledge and Will that can be
revealed to us; and then for the first time in the fourteenth verse is
Jesus introduced, as the person through whose character these attributes
are to be communicated, “the Word was made _flesh_ and dwelt amongst
us.” I dissent therefore from the translation which Mr. Byrth condemned;
but when I am told that NO SCHOLAR would tolerate such a translation, I
turn to my books, and I find Origen and Eusebius not only tolerating but
actually adopting and insisting upon this very translation. I recollect
that Greek was _the vernacular tongue_ of these eminent men; and when I
am told by an Englishman, in this nineteenth century, that no Greek
Scholar would do what Origen and Eusebius _have done_, I think it is not
disrespectful to decline his authority in all matters that require
calmness and accuracy.

6. It was stated that _no scholar_ could translate the fifth verse of
the ninth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans thus: “Whose are
the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came: God who is
over all be blessed for ever.” Perhaps the more correct rendering would
be, “whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ
came (_i.e._ from among whom the Messiah was to be born); he who was
over all, was God blessed for ever:” or with more fidelity, because with
more rapidity, our language not admitting, like the Greek, the ellipsis
of the substantive verb—“He who was over all, being God blessed for
ever.” With regard to the ellipsis of the substantive verb, nothing can
be more common. It occurs again and again in the verses that lie on each
side of the text in question. And in ascriptions of praise it is almost
uniform. And nothing can be more natural than that the Apostle should
state as the closing distinction of the Jews, that over all their
dispensations it was God who presided, the God of their signal
Theocracy. Now when I am told that no scholar would so translate, let me
simply name to you some of the Scholars who _do_ adopt this translation:
Erasmus, Bucer, Le Clerc, Grotius, and Wetstein; the first three most
learned Trinitarians, and the last two, if not of unquestioned
orthodoxy, only of suspected Heresy. Let me now give you some quotations
from other Scholars of an earlier date, from the Christian Fathers, even
when adopting the received translation of this passage. Tertullian,
whose temper rather than his learning has been preserved in controversy,
says, “We never speak of two Gods or two Lords; but following the
Apostle, if the Father and the Son are to be named together, we call the
Father, God, and Jesus Christ, Lord.” “But when speaking of Christ
alone, I may call him God, as does the same Apostle; _of whom is Christ,
who is God over all blessed for ever_. For speaking of a ray of the sun
by itself,” continues Tertullian, “I may call it the sun; but when I
mention at the same time the sun, from which this ray proceeds, I do not
then give that name to the latter.” “Some of the earlier GREEK FATHERS,”
who I suppose it will be admitted knew Greek, “expressly denied that
Christ is ‘the God over all.’” “Supposing,” says Origen, “that some
among the multitude of believers, _likely as they are to have
differences of opinion_, rashly suppose that the Saviour is God over
all; _yet we do not_, for we believe him when he said, ‘The Father who
sent me is greater than I.’” Even after the Nicene Council, Eusebius, in
writing against Marcellus, says: “As Marcellus thinks, He who was born
of the holy virgin, and clothed in flesh, who dwelt among men, and
suffered what had been foretold, and died for our sins, was the very God
over all; for daring to say which, the Church of God numbered Sabellius
among Atheists and Blasphemers.”[144]

I have one other observation to make upon this verse. The translation of
the passage depends very much on a question of punctuation, and, so far,
is a question for Critics and Scholars. Now we have seen already the
high authorities that give the punctuation in favour of the Unitarian
rendering.[145] I say nothing of the conjectural readings of these two
passages, because, though brought by the Preacher as instances of
unlicensed Conjecture, he treated them chiefly as mistranslations, with
the view, I suppose, of introducing the same passages over and over
again, to multiply the instances of Unitarian alterations. The
conjecture is not adopted by the improved version; and yet, for allowing
some little weight to the authority of Dr. Whitby in the latter case,
for it allows none whatever to the conjecture of Crellius in the former,
it is charged with two sins: first, the sin of adopting the conjecture;
and secondly, the sin of mistranslation after _rejecting_ the
conjecture. This is a method of multiplying sins, or rather charges.
Indeed, if I understood the Preacher, he admitted that Crellius and
Slichtingius, in the then state of Biblical knowledge, might very
justifiably have made the conjectures, _for they were Scholars_: but
that now, with all our new lights, such a conjecture is inadmissible;
that is to say, Biblical Literature was not far enough advanced in their
day to enable them to discover in these texts, what yet if they did not
discover there, or somewhere else, they must perish everlastingly. And
yet we were told that Christianity was not the property of critics and
scholars, but the gift of God to all men.[146]

Now when I examine into these things, my duty to scholarship, my
reverence for its high functions, my duty to Truth, my duty to the
public, who ought not, in matters not of opinion but of knowledge, to be
misled by their Teachers, and my duty to the Pulpit, which suffers in
power and credit by every unwarrantable statement that proceeds from it,
all oblige me to declare that the impression which I carried away from
Christ Church, that the supposed ignorance of a vast assembly was
sported with, and their confidence abused, has been more than confirmed.

So much for scholarship and candour together. I have now to speak of
“candour” alone.

1. A sentiment was quoted from Coleridge, expressing his belief, that if
Jesus was not God, _he was a deceiver_: and then the Preacher asked his
audience, “Can the advocates of a system that makes Jesus a deceiver be
Christians?” thus identifying Unitarians with the sentiment of
Coleridge. How long will controversalists condescend to such practices?
From any controversy so conducted no good can come: but great scandal to
Religionists, and deep pain to all who love Religion and Truth better
than their own party.

2. Advantage was taken of some words of my Colleague, the Minister of
this Chapel, to produce the impression that Unitarianism, as a religious
faith, was merely negative. Now the words themselves not only bear no
such meaning, but guard against it; and the whole speech from which they
were extracted is rich in the overflowings of the true, working, onward
spirit of our faith, as you who have the privilege of worshipping here,
well know everything from the same mind must necessarily be. The words
quoted were these: “I conceive that, _controversially_, our system is
correctly described as purely negative;” and the whole object of the
speech was to enforce the peaceful and fruitful view that the power of
our religion proceeds not from what we disbelieve, but from what we
believe. No man who read the speech could be ignorant of this; and it is
remarkable, that the very next words, containing a passage quoted by Mr.
Byrth, are these: “Let us place the utmost reliance upon positive
religious principles; and especially let us act on our own internal
convictions.” My valued friend is abundantly equal to the task of
defending himself, and not often should I do him the disservice of
appearing for him, but as this statement was made in a lecture which it
was my duty to answer, and as I am always confirmed in any view of my
own that I can identify with him, I shall, to show that the present is
no forced advocacy,[147] extract a few sentences from an Article, which
nearly at the time he was speaking, it happened to be my duty to be
writing. “We are not devotional, we are not practical, in our
_combative_ aspects. We are on preliminary, not on Christian ground. We
are not improving, we have not a Religion, until we have ceased
contending and commenced cultivating. Moral progress proceeds from
cultivation of the faith we rest in, producing its fruits in the warmth
of love. We must pursue what is our own, and forget our controversial
attitudes. They never will nourish the inner life of a Congregation, nor
keep its interest alive. They give us no character of our own. They feed
no intense yearnings. They make no devoted disciples. We must _proceed_
upon our own views, not defending them, but loving them and studying
them. We must pursue a more independent course of DEVELOPEMENT. We must
understand our own mission, which is not to battle but to advance; not
to be dogmatists of any kind, but cherishers of Spirit and of Truth. Our
Union must be a moral one, a sympathy of Spirit. We can have no
intellectual or doctrinal union. We must give up therefore the idea of
aggregate life, as a Body devoted to a uniform Belief, and held together
by the forms of an uniform Ecclesiastical Government. The whole body can
flourish only by the members having each life in himself. Our union must
be one of sentiment and first principles; our life one of
individualities.” And again, speaking of Unitarian Ministers: “They
should present a Christianity qualified by its energy to meet both the
strength and the weakness of the spiritual being, to inspire a devoted
love, and to lead souls captive. They should take their stand upon no
combative ground. They should eschew a religion of negations. FAITH
should be their great power; a faith that appeals to the faith of their
hearers, nourishing it where it is, creating it where it is not. With no
other bond of union than this power to satisfy the deep spiritual wants
of those to whom they minister, they above all others should cultivate a
Christianity that has positive attractions for the spirit of man, a
Christianity that is fitted to draw upon itself the warmest and purest
affections; a Christianity that engages to do for us what it did for
Christ, to elevate the diviner tendencies, whilst it supports the
weakness of our frail yet noble nature. From the absence of creeds, and
its want of a mystical or fanatical interest, no sect, so much as
Unitarianism, requires a sympathetic, generous, deep-hearted faith, an
affirmative and nutritive Christianity, to lay hold upon the religious
affections, and feed the religious life of its Churches. There is no
other sect to which coldness in Religion could be so fatal.”[148]

I have now gone through all the evidence adduced on Wednesday evening,
in support of the allegation, “The Unitarian interpretation of the New
Testament based upon defective Scholarship, or on dishonest or uncandid
Criticism.” Such a declaration, again I say, should never have been
made, or should have been adequately sustained. To fail in the proof is
to pass upon the statement not intellectual only, but moral
condemnation. We were told by the preacher that when the time came to
support the allegation, he would not use irritating language, but sound
argument. I grieve to say that pledge was not redeemed. And the moral
condemnation of advancing such a charge, and leaving it unproved, falls
upon him. I understand that the lecture was continued yesterday evening;
when the press puts it into my hands I shall have an opportunity of
seeing what additional comments it may require. But when I was told by
the preacher himself, on Wednesday evening, that on the evidence then
adduced, and which I have now presented to you, he regarded his charge
made out not only in one but in both its clauses, that in short he had
been too forbearing, for that instead of the disjunctive he might have
used the copulative conjunction, and made his accusation to be this,
“The Unitarian Interpretation of the New Testament based upon defective
scholarship, _and_ on dishonest _and_ uncandid Criticism,”—I held myself
discharged from all further duty of attention.

And now, after the “expostulations” to which you have been subjected
elsewhere, your convictions treated as sins, and the exercise of your
conscientious judgment represented as exposing you to the wrath of a
holy God, (strange combination of ideas, wrath and holiness!) I may,
perhaps, not unbecomingly address a few words to you my
fellow-believers. Trinitarians have the power to deny you the _name_ of
Christians; but they have not the power to deny you the Reality. They
cannot prevent you _being_ Christians; and it is a light thing for you
to be judged by man’s judgment, provided only you can disprove the
judgment by preserving your Christianity unprovoked, by retaining your
Christian love towards those who deny you the Christian name. The worst
operation of persecution and fanaticism is its tendency to produce a
reaction. The worst working of an Evil Spirit is that it calls up other
evil spirits to oppose it. The temper we complain of has a tendency to
provoke the same temper in ourselves. And yet an evil spirit cannot be
conquered by an evil spirit. This is one of the divine prerogatives of
the spirit of goodness. You must overcome evil with good. You must be
prepared to expect that men who deem themselves your religious
superiors, will comport themselves accordingly. You must regard it as
only natural that men who hold themselves to be the favourites of God,
and never expect to meet you in heaven, should treat you with little
respect on earth. Nay, you must even have some tenderness for the
feelings of irritation which this very faith cannot fail to generate in
the kindlier nature of those who hold it. Holding you to be lost, and
having human hearts, how can they avoid assailing you with eager,
anxious, and even persecuting aggression? I blame them not for this: I
only wonder there is so little of it: that they leave us to our fate,
with so little effort, to use their own favourite figure, to pluck the
brands from the burning. Nay, my friends, more than this, their
confidence in their own salvation depending on the dogmatical assurance
with which they hold certain doctrinal ideas, they are naturally alarmed
lest this _essential faith_ should in any way be disturbed in their
bosoms, and they come to look upon every freer mind as a tempter and an
enemy. And as their Faith is by their own boast not a _rational_ Faith,
as it has no roots in their intellectual nature, they feel that their
danger is all the greater, and that their caution must be all the more.
They are not happy in their exclusive faith. How can they if they have
Christian hearts? It rests upon an evidence out of themselves, so that
they cannot, at all times, be confident in it. It presents to them many
unhappy images, a vindictive God,[149] an exclusive Heaven, a condemned
world, fellow-beings against whom their religious feelings are
embittered, but towards whom their hearts still yearn. All these are
reasons why you should exercise forbearance. You have an easier part.
You have a faith that supports you in meek Hope and Trust for all. Your
hearts are at peace both with Man and God. You can wait in patience
until Heaven does justice unto all. Having this more blessed and
peaceful faith, you must also make it more fruitful, and thus be enabled
to meet the question, “What do ye more than others?”

For ourselves, let us pursue our own way, and love our own Christ in
meek faith and trust. Doctrines are uncertain: but the spirit of Jesus
is not uncertain. You know what that is; and that its fruits are, “love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,
temperance.” Love, venerate, obey in all things, the Heaven-sent and
Heaven-marked Christ; cherish the growth of his spirit in your souls;
place him before you in moments of trying duty; and in all times of
nature’s languishing see him at the open gate of Heaven, inviting you to
be faithful to the end, that you may join him at the resurrection of the
just. Do this and your souls shall live. To be this is to be Christians.
Others may hold a different language; but you owe no allegiance save to
God in Christ. One is your master, and all ye are brethren.

------------------------------------

APPENDIX.

---------------------

See pp. 30, 31.

συντελειαν του αιωνος—the end of the _age_.

“Hanc ob causam Judæi universum tempus in duas magnas periodos
dispescere consueverunt, alteram Messiæ adventum antecedentem (αιων
οὑτος vel ὁ νυν αιων), alteram consequentem (αιων μελλων vel ερχομενος
vel εκεινος). Postremam illius (αιωνος τουτου) partem, ævo Messiano
annexam, nominarunt ὑστερους καιρους, καιρον εσχατον, εσχατα των χρονων,
εσχατας ἡμερας, _exitumque ejus_ τα τελη των αιωνων vel συντελειαν του
αιωνος.”—_Bertholdt._ _Christologia Judæorum Jesu Apostolorumque ætate._
pp. 38, 39.

* * * * *

“On this account the Jews were accustomed to divide TIME into two great
Periods, one preceding the advent of the Messiah, and called ‘this
world,’ ‘this age,’ or, ‘the world that now is,’ ‘the age that now is;’
the other subsequent to the advent, and called ‘the world to come,’ ‘the
age to come,’ ‘that world,’ ‘that age.’ The latter portion of the former
Period, that immediately adjoining the Messianic Age, they called ‘the
latter times,’ ‘the last time,’ ‘these last days,’—and its close (_that
is, the close of the Ante-Messianic Period_), ‘the ends of the world,’
or, ‘the end of the world,’ ‘the end of the age.’”

---------------------

_The Introduction of St. John’s Gospel._

See pp. 31, 32.

“In the beginning was the LOGOS, and the LOGOS was with God, and the
LOGOS was God.”

“There is no word in English answering to the Greek word Logos, as here
used. It was employed to denote a mode of conception concerning the
Deity, familiar at the time when St. John wrote, and intimately blended
with the philosophy of his age, but long since obsolete, and so foreign
from our habits of thinking, that it is not easy for us to conform our
minds to its apprehension. The Greek word _Logos_, in one of its primary
senses, answered nearly to our word _Reason_. It denoted that faculty by
which the mind disposes its ideas in their proper relations to each
other: the Disposing Power, if I may so speak, of the mind. In reference
to this primary sense, it was applied to the Deity, but in a wider
significance. The Logos of God was regarded, not in its strictest sense,
as merely the Reason of God, but under certain aspects, as the Wisdom,
the Mind, the Intellect of God. To this the Creation of all things was
_especially_ ascribed. The conception may seem obvious in itself; but
the Cause why the creation was primarily referred to the Logos, or
Intellect of God, rather than to his goodness or omnipotence, is to be
found in the Platonic Philosophy, as it existed about the time of
Christ, and particularly as taught by the eminent Jewish philosopher,
Philo of Alexandria.

“According to this philosophy, there existed an archetypal world of
IDEAS, formed by God, the perfect model of the Sensible Universe;
corresponding, so far as what is divine may be compared with what is
human, to the plan of a building or city, which an architect forms in
his own mind before commencing its erection. The faculty by which God
disposed and arranged the world of IDEAS was his Logos, Reason, or
Intellect. This world, according to one representation, was supposed to
have its seat in the Logos or Mind of God; according to another, it was
identified with the Logos. The Platonic philosophy further taught, that
the Ideas of God were not merely the archetypes, but, in scholastic
language, the essential forms of all created things. In this philosophy,
matter in _its primary state_, primitive matter, if I may so speak, was
regarded merely as the substratum of attributes, being in itself devoid
of all. Attributes, it is conceived, were impressed upon it by the Ideas
of God, which Philo often speaks of under the figure of _seals_. These
Ideas, indeed, constituted those attributes, becoming connected with
primitive matter in an incomprehensible manner, and thus giving form and
being to all things sensible. But the seat of these ideas, these
formative principles, being the Logos, or intellect of God; or,
according to the other representations mentioned, these Ideas
constituting the Logos, the Logos was, in consequence, represented as
the great agent in creation. This doctrine being settled, the meaning of
the Term gradually extended itself by a natural process, and came at
last to comprehend _all the attributes of God manifested in the creation
and government of the Universe_. These attributes, abstractly from God
himself, were made an object of thought under the name of the Logos. The
Logos thus conceived, was necessarily personified or spoken of
figuratively as a person. In our own language, in describing its
agency,—agency, in its nature personal, and to be ultimately referred to
God,—we might indeed avoid attaching a personal character to the Logos
considered abstractly from God, by the use of the neuter pronoun _it_.
Thus we might say, All things were made by _it_. But the Greek language
afforded no such resource, the relative pronoun, in concord with Logos,
being necessarily masculine. Thus the Logos or Intellect of God came to
be, figuratively or literally, conceived of as an intermediate being
between God and his creatures, the great agent in the creation and
government of the universe.” * * *

“The conception and the name of the Logos were familiar at the time when
St. John wrote. They occur in the Apocryphal book of the Wisdom of
Solomon. The writer, speaking of the destruction of the first-born of
the Egyptians, says (xviii. 15):

“‘Thine almighty Logos leapt down from heaven, from his royal throne, a
fierce warrior, into the midst of a land of destruction.’”

In another passage, likewise, in the prayer ascribed to Solomon, he is
represented as thus addressing God (ix. 1, 2):

“God of our fathers, and Lord of mercy,
Who hast made all things by thy Logos,
And fashioned man by thy Wisdom. * * *

“St. John, writing in Asia Minor, where many, for whom he intended his
Gospel, were familiar with the conception of the Logos, has probably,
for this reason, adopted the term Logos, in the proem of his Gospel, to
express that manifestation of God by Christ, which is elsewhere referred
to the spirit of God.”

“But to return: the conception that has been described having been
formed of the Logos, and the Logos being, as I have said, necessarily
personified, or spoken of figuratively as a person, it soon followed, as
a natural consequence, that the Logos was by many _hypostatized_, or
conceived of as a proper person. When the corrective of experience and
actual knowledge cannot be applied, what is strongly imagined is very
likely to be regarded as having a real existence; and the philosophy of
the ancients was composed in great part of such imaginations. The Logos,
it is to be recollected, was that power by which God disposed in order
the Ideas of the archetypal world. But in particular reference to the
creation of the material universe, the Logos came in time to be
conceived of by many as hypostatized, as a proper person going forth, as
it were, from God in order to execute the plan prepared, to dispose and
arrange all things conformably to it, and to give sensible forms to
_primitive matter_, by impressing it with the ideas of the archetypal
world. In many cases in which the term ‘Logos’ occurs, if we understand
by it the Disposing Power of God in a sense conformable to the notions
explained, we may have a clearer idea of its meaning than if we render
it by the term ‘Reason,’ or ‘Wisdom,’ or any other which our language
offers.” * * *

“From the explanations which have been given of the conceptions
concerning the Logos of God, it will appear that this term properly
denoted an attribute or attributes of God; and that upon the notion of
an attribute or attributes, the idea of _personality_ was superinduced.”
* * *

“It was his (St. John’s) purpose in the introduction of his Gospel, to
declare that Christianity had the same divine origin as the Universe
itself; that it was to be considered as proceeding from the same power
of God. Writing in Asia Minor, for readers, by many of whom the term
‘Logos’ was more familiarly used than any other, to express the
attributes of God viewed in relation to his creatures, he adopted this
term to convey his meaning, because from their associations with it, it
was fitted particularly to impress and affect their minds; thus
connecting the great truths which he taught with their former modes of
thinking and speaking. But upon the idea primarily expressed by this
term, a new Conception, the Conception of the proper personality of
those attributes, had been superinduced. This doctrine, then, the
doctrine of an hypostatized Logos, it appears to have been his purpose
to set aside. He would guard himself, I think, against being understood
to countenance it. The Logos, he teaches, was not the agent of God, but
God himself. Using the term merely to denote the attributes of God as
manifested in his works, he teaches that the operations of the Logos are
the operations of God; that all conceived of under that name is to be
referred immediately to God; that in speaking of the Logos we speak of
God, ‘That the Logos is God.’

“The Platonic Conception of a personal Logos, distinct from God, was the
Embryo form of the Christian Trinity. If, therefore, the view just given
of the purpose of St. John be correct, it is a remarkable fact, that his
language has been alleged as a main support of that very doctrine the
rudiments of which it was intended to oppose.”—_Norton on the Trinity._

I shall now give a paraphrase of the Introduction of St. John’s Gospel
in harmony with the Conception that the Logos is described first as
dwelling in God—and afterwards as manifested through Christ—the Logos
made flesh—“God manifest in the flesh,” an expression which is so far
from implying Trinitarianism, that it exactly expresses the Unitarian
idea of Christianity as a revelation of God—of Deity _imaged_ perfectly
on the human scale—of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God on
the face of Jesus Christ.

_Proem of St. John’s Gospel._

“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the
Logos was God. It was in the beginning with God. By it all things were
made, and without it was not any thing made, that was made. It was life
(the source of life)—and the source of life or blessedness was the light
of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended
it not. There was a man sent from God. This man came as a witness to
bear testimony concerning the light; that all men through him might
believe. He was not the Light, but he was sent to bear testimony
concerning the Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man
that cometh into the world. It was in the world, and the world was made
by it, and the world knew it not. It came unto its own, and its own
received it not. But to as many as received it, it gave power to become
the Sons of God (LOGOI)—being born, not of favoured races, nor through
the will of the flesh, nor through the will of man, but being children
of God. And the Logos became flesh (was manifested through a man, the
Mind or Spirit[150] of God shown on the human Image), and dwelt amongst
us, and we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth.”

---------------------

Romans. ix. 5, page 32.

“Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came;
God who is over all be blessed for ever.” Amen.

Ὧν οἱ πατέρες, καὶ ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα· ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς
εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. Ἀμήν.

The objections made to our rendering of this passage are these:—

1. That ὁ ὠν coming first in the sentence must refer to the nominative
(χριστὸς). But there is no grammatical rule to prevent ὁ ὠν _commencing_
a sentence and referring to a _subsequent_ nominative; so that to say it
_must_ refer to the preceding χριστὸς is only to take the desired
interpretation for granted.

2. That another article is required before θεος, and the position of the
words to be Ὁ δε θεος ὁ ὠν ἐπὶ πάντων, κ. τ. λ. If θεος had been placed
first in the sentence the article would have been used, but the
qualifying expression ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων more than supplies its place. A
passage from Philo exactly parallel is cited by the Rev. W. Hincks in
his very able Review of Dr. J. P. Smith’s Scripture Testimony to the
Messiah του προς ἀληθειαν οντος θεου. Ed. 1610, (apud Middleton,) p.
860. Also Clem. Rom. ad Cor. cap. xxxii. ὁ παντοκρατωρ θεος, where
παντοκρατωρ is equivalent to ὁ ὠν ἐπὶ πάντων. Eusebius has this passage,
τὸ τῆς φυχῆς ὄμμα πρὸς τὸν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸν καθαρῶς τείναντες. See
Jortin. Eccles. Hist. vol. ii. 235.

3. That εὐλογητὸς ought to come first in the sentence. But the words
“for ever,” εἰς τοὺς αιῶνας, whenever used, are placed at the end of the
sentence, and this naturally draws εὐλογητος to the same position, to
avoid awkwardness or ambiguity. In the cases where θεος has dependent
words, then ευλογητος comes first, that the words connected by
construction may not be awkwardly separated: in the case of ευλογητος
having dependent words, as here, then θεος would naturally come first.

In the only three cases in which εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας occur in the
New Testament they follow one another in this fixed order.

In the Septuagint, contrary to the statement of Whitby, there is one
clear instance of a similar construction: Κυριος ὁ θεος ευλογητος, Ps.
lxviii. 19.

Finally, ευλογητος is nowhere in the New Testament applied to Jesus.

4. That our rendering requires another substantive verb. Of such
ellipsis examples might be given without number. See Rom. x. 12. 2 Cor.
v. 5. Ephes. iv. 6, a case exactly in point. Rev. xiv. 13.

5. That there is an antithesis intended by St. Paul between “as
concerning the flesh,” and “God over all”. But the sentence is not an
antithesis but a climax closed by Christ, as the consummation: and at
the close of a climax of blessings and privileges, acknowledgment almost
spontaneously bursts out to God.

------------------------------------

_Comments on the Rev. Mr. Byrth’s Lecture entitled “The Unitarian
Interpretation of the New Testament based upon defective Scholarship,
or on dishonest or uncandid Criticism.”_

Page 108.—“It does appear to me extraordinary, that my opponents should
appear to complain of the introduction of critical and scholastic
considerations into this discussion.” We make no such complaint. We
complain that the _essence_ of Christianity should be derived from the
Criticism and Interpretation of _controverted_ passages. Will my
reverend opponent state a single argument for Trinitarianism, or adduce
a single scriptural evidence, not _fairly_ open to hostile Criticism or
Interpretation? To _us_ the Revelation is not derived from any thing
doubtful; it is derived from those impressions of Jesus the Christ which
Trinitarianism itself receives. To us the Revelation is the Person, (in
which we include his Life, Character, Destinies,) of the man Christ
Jesus. We know our God when we know that he who was as full of grace as
of truth was the Image of our Father’s Mind: we know God’s will for man
when we look upon him who was perfected human nature: we know the
connections of Heaven with Duty when we see the crucified made the
glorified, and taken to the bosom of his Father.

---------------------

Page 115.—“It does not, however, follow that, because the Unitarian
interpretation of the New Testament bears this character, all Unitarians
are defective Scholars, or uncandid or dishonest Critics. Many of them
may have received their opinions through the channel of traditional
education; and may never have deemed it obligatory upon them to examine
the matter for themselves.” So, we have the choice of any one of three
characters, _viz._, BAD SCHOLARS, DISHONEST CRITICS, or _So-called
Christians, who know nothing and care nothing about the matter_. Does
Mr. Byrth really think that this last refuge removes the insult of his
Title, or softens its indictment? Some of _us_, confined to a choice
among these three descriptions, _preach_ Christianity, and are therefore
certainly bound to “examine the matter” for ourselves; nor is it to us
that the suspicion usually attaches of receiving our “opinions through
the channels of a traditional education.”

“The dogmata are too few, too general, too unimportant, to elicit
inquiry, or to excite anxiety as to their truth.” There is some truth in
this, though not exactly of the kind the author contemplated. The
interest of Trinitarianism depends greatly on the number of its dogmata,
their intricacy, their supposed necessity to salvation, the exactness of
their right mutual positions. There is much in a saving _Theology_,
having an intricate scheme, and whose main principles and evidences are
external to the mind of the believer, and therefore constantly agitating
him with apprehension as to whether he has disposed them according to
the precise conditions of orthodoxy, to occupy and sometimes oppress
minds that have little affinities with a saving _Religion_, a simple
spirit of Worship, Duty, and Trust immortal. _But is it true_ that these
Unitarian doctrines are “unimportant”—The Fatherhood of God—the
Brotherhood of Man—the relations of Jesus to God as His Image, and to
Man as his Model—the retributions of Eternity—the Heaven of Duty?

---------------------

Page 119.—See the Note.—Surely Mr. Byrth will perceive the unfairness of
concluding a Book to be _our_ Standard, merely because some _other_
parties, very unfavourably disposed towards us, choose to represent it
as such.

---------------------

Page 124.—See the Note.—“I have been charged with almost or altogether
suppressing, in the delivery of this Discourse, the word
‘controversially.’” I eagerly assure Mr. Byrth that no such charge was
ever made, nor could be made with truth, and I am much grieved that any
rumour has conveyed to him the pain of such an impression. Though using
hard words to his opponents, and giving them the choice of _any one_ of
three _bad_ characters, I believe him perfectly incapable of
“dishonesty.” Believing me to have made such a charge, whilst I do not
excuse him for so believing upon hearsay, I feel obliged by his
forbearance, and for a courtesy in denying the charge, which if made I
should not have deserved. I complained that the “controversial”
attitudes of Unitarianism were confounded with _its own peaceful and
positive ones_, two things that were most carefully separated in the
speeches from which Mr. Byrth took extracts; and that he represented as
a description _of Unitarianism_, what was distinctly stated to be
Unitarianism, “controversially” described. Mr. Byrth, though giving the
_word_ “controversially,” overlooked its _meaning_.

---------------------

Page 132.—“Epiphanius asserts that the Ebionites,” &c.: also the note
marked †.

As it is exceedingly inconvenient to repeat subjects and answers, and so
never to get rid of a topic, I refer Mr. Byrth and my readers to note B,
on the Ebionites and their Gospel, in the Appendix to the Second Lecture
of our Course.

---------------------

Page 140.—See the Note.—“I cannot but express my satisfaction that in
the _very place_ where this book was thus regarded as an authority, and
thus earnestly recommended, it is now renounced and disclaimed.”

I do not know what Mr. Byrth includes in “renouncing” and “disclaiming.”
If these words mean “rejecting as a standard authority,” then in the
place alluded to was the Improved Version _always_ renounced and
disclaimed.

The praise quoted in the note certainly requires much qualification.
Nevertheless the Improved Version is neither renounced nor disclaimed.
We have no predilection for the rude principle of taking things in the
mass, or leaving them in the mass, without discrimination. And I fancy
that if our opponents were in these matters _as much at liberty_ as
ourselves, there are some of their _standards_ which would soon be
thoroughly sifted.

---------------------

Page 143.—“For even they would scarcely think highly of the scholarship
of Bishop Pearce.”

I have quoted Bishop Pearce, not for his learning, though unquestionably
that was respectable, but for the sake of stating that the acceptance by
a Bishop of the English Church of a certain interpretation ought to have
screened “a reputed heretic” from the charge of accepting the same
interpretation solely for the sake of an _a priori_ meaning.

---------------------

Page 146.—“Epiphanius has little authority with any one else.” Mr. Byrth
is quite right in his estimate of Epiphanius. But it is hardly wise for
those who, like Mr. Byrth, rest their faith upon external testimonies,
to look too closely into the characters of the witnesses, or raise
doubts respecting them in the public mind. We know how much of the
weight of these testimonies rests upon Eusebius—and I doubt not Mr.
Byrth knows very well that he is clearly convicted of having
interpolated one passage in Josephus, and corrupted another. How can we
tell how far this process of reconciliation was carried? Why is it that
we have not the works of the Heretics, of whose _names_ ecclesiastical
History is so full?

---------------------

Page 147.—See the Note.—Mr. Byrth seems to think it impossible to have
worded the Title of his Lecture so as not to have insulted _some one_.
Will he allow me to suggest what the Title might have been without
offence, though not with exact truth of description—“Some of the
interpretations of the Improved Version of the New Testament based upon
defective Scholarship.” To attribute “dishonesty” and want of “candour,”
Mr. Byrth will I am sure feel to be too vulgar to be altogether worthy
of his character as a Critic and a Scholar. In the text of his Lecture
(p. 122), he indeed states his belief that Unitarian Interpretation, _of
every kind_, wants scholarship, or wants honesty—and it was to the proof
of this statement that he ought to have applied himself, or else to have
altered the Title of his Lecture.

---------------------

Page 148.—Luke iii. 23.—“And Jesus himself began to be about thirty
years of age, being (_as was supposed_) the son of Joseph.”

This passage was not introduced into the first part of Mr. Byrth’s
Lecture as originally delivered. I state this only to excuse myself for
having taken no notice of it in the body of my Lecture. This is the case
also with some other passages. There were also expressions and
sentiments of Mr. Byrth spoken, but not printed. I would not state this
were it not necessary to justify some passages in my own Lecture. I
refer especially to an oratorical use that was made of a most
objectionable and irreverent sentiment of Coleridge’s, full of the very
spirit of dogmatism and presumption. P. 161.

With regard to Luke iii. 23. The rendering of the Improved Version is
that of Bishop Pearce, who I suppose had no heretical reason for
preferring it. I confess it does not seem natural. Dr. Carpenter thinks
the words “as he was supposed,” put in to guard against some Gnostic or
Platonic error, and for the purpose of stating distinctly that he _was_
the son of Joseph, as he was supposed to be. The same writer acutely
remarks that it is most improbable, indeed next to impossible, that any
writer should trace our Lord’s descent from David _through Joseph_, and
then declare that Joseph was only _supposed_ to be his father, thus
nullifying his own genealogy. Kuinoel gives a suggestion of Boltenius,
to which he evidently inclines that ὡς ἐνομίζετο applies not to the
supposed descent of Jesus from Joseph but to the _whole_ genealogy. I
annex his note.

“_Boltenius_ ad h. l. suspicatus est, verba ὡς ἐνομίζετο, non tantum eo
referenda esse, quod Judæi falso putaverint, Josephum esse Christi
parentem, sed spectari quoque his verbis genealogiam ipsam h. l.
exhibitam, eaque reddenda esse: _hanc putabant esse Jesu genealogiam,
erat pater ejus Josephus, hujus pater Eli_, etc., ut adeo Lucas
professus sit, se inseruisse genealogiam, prouti ea in manus ipsius
venisset, seque authentiam illius acrius defendere nolle. Hac ratione
admissa, explicari forte etiam posset, quî factum sit, ut Lucas
genealogiam ipsi suspectam, in Evangelio infantiæ Jesu propositam, ad
calcem illius fortasse adjectam, h. l. inseruerit, quod nempe aliquamdiu
dubius hæsisset, an eam reciperet. Alii opinati sunt, hanc genealogiam,
cum diversa sit ab ea quæ in Matthæi commentariis reperitur, cum laxiori
vinculo superioribus annexa sit, non a Luca ipso, sed serius additam
esse.”

---------------------

Page 149.—See the Note.—“Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary: of
whom (Mary) was born (or was begotten) Jesus who is called the Christ.”
“Now is it possible to declare, in plainer terms, that, though Jesus was
born of Mary, who was married to Joseph, yet that Joseph _did not beget
him_.”—_Magee._ Great is the ingenuity here, wonderfully misapplied. Is
it not clear that St. Matthew was tracing the descent of Jesus from
David, and that he brings down the chain to the very last link, namely
Joseph, that is, the very Joseph necessary to be included, the husband
of the mother of Jesus? _That_ Joseph, the very husband of Mary, from
whom Christ was born, being thus shown to be a lineal descendant of
David, the Evangelist stops. What could he do more? His object being to
trace the descent of Jesus from David, what could be more natural than,
when he arrived at Joseph, to say—here is the unbroken succession, for
this is the very man who was the husband of that Mary from whom Jesus
was born. Of course the writer could not alter the form of expression
until he arrived at the very man whom he wished to identify as the
husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus—and the reason for altering it then
is very obvious.

If Joseph was not the father of Jesus, the genealogy is vitiated, for it
is _through Joseph_ that the descent is traced.

---------------------

Pages 157, 158.—“He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and
the world knew him not.” “He was in the world, and the world was
enlightened by him, and yet the world knew him not.”—I. V. This
interpretation cannot, I think, be defended. I am sorry it was ever
given. Yet Mr. Byrth’s sarcasm is quite powerless against it, “what kind
of light is that which blinds the eyes which it was intended to
illuminate?” in the face of the text—“the light shineth in darkness, and
the darkness _comprehendeth_ it not;” unless he adopts the
interpretation of some of the Fathers,—“And the darkness did not
insinuate itself into the light, interpenetrate and quench it.”

---------------------

Page 161.—The liberality of ROBERT HALL. We desire to speak with respect
of this great and good man. But perhaps it would be impossible to name a
man more illiberal as a controversialist, and who allowed himself such
an unmeasured use of uncharitable language. It was only the other day I
learned an anecdote of him from the person to whom the words were
spoken, descriptive at once of his vigour and his rancour: speaking of
the Unitarians he said—“they are inspired from _beneath_,”—with a look,
said my informant, never to be forgotten. Many passages might be brought
from his writings, especially his Reviews, demonstrative of this
temper,—but the passage given by Mr. Byrth himself, in which he is
satisfied to rest conclusions so momentous and fearful upon reasonings
so arbitrary and vague, is quite enough. When any man acquainted with
the state of Theological opinion in the world, and with the
impossibility of uniformity, can fix upon his own opinions as essential,
and run a doctrinal line between Heaven and Hell, we require no further
tests of his “liberality,” unless indeed he is, what Mr. Hall was not,
only a traditional believer.

------------------------------------

I have already remarked that some of my observations apply more to the
spoken than to the printed lecture. Were it possible to efface the
impressions made by the speaker, and which required to be counteracted,
gladly would I efface every word of personal reference from my pages.
Even now, with the recollection fresh upon my mind, of the unsparing
contempt, both literary and moral, expressed by words and tones, not
conveyed by the printed page, when the speaker, feeling that the
sympathies of his audience were with him to the full, and that their
knowledge of the subject required from him _the broadest statements_, to
render it intelligible, gave himself to the excitement of the moment,—I
have more than doubted whether it would not have been better to have
avoided every personal allusion. I believe that I have in no case
overstated or misrepresented what was _said_. I deeply grieve to fix
upon my pages the suggestions, perhaps, of momentary excitement, which
Mr. Byrth’s better feeling has, in some instances, refused to record—and
that the obligation I was under to remove an impression actually made,
does not permit me to give full effect to this working of a kinder
spirit, the manifestations of which, in other ways, I have respectfully
to acknowledge.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture III.

Footnote 133:

“Heresy and Orthodoxy,” by Rev. J. B. White, pp. 8, 9.

Footnote 134:

Scholz retains θεος.

Footnote 135:

See Griesbach. Chrysostom omits “_who is God over all_.” Clement, in a
passage evidently imitated from this, omits the doxology, which he is
not likely to have done if he understood it as referring to Christ. In
addition to other authorities for pointing the passage in consistency
with the Unitarian Interpretation, Griesbach quotes “Many Fathers who
denied that Christ could be called ‘the God over all.’ Multi patres,
qui Christum τὸν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸν appellari posse negant.” In an
edition of Griesbach, printed by Taylor and Walton in 1837, this
punctuation is given, and is stated also to be the pointing of Scholz.

Footnote 136:

John xiv. 6, 7.

Footnote 137:

John v. 19.

Footnote 138:

Acts x. 34-43.

Footnote 139:

Matt. xxiv. 3, 34.

Footnote 140:

“The mistranslation of the word αἰῶνες, by the English word ‘worlds,’
in the commencement of the Epistle to the Hebrews. For giving this
sense to the original term, there is not, I think, any authority to be
found either in Hellenistic or classic Greek.”—_Norton on the
Trinity._

Footnote 141:

Heb. ix. 26.

Footnote 142:

Whitby, from whose armoury I find so many weapons have been taken,
contends also for “the end of the world,” on the ground that Christ’s
miraculous assistance was continued sensibly _till the beginning of
the fourth century_.

Footnote 143:

John x. 34, 35, 36.

Footnote 144:

Wetstein, quoted by Norton.

Footnote 145:

See note, page 19. I have no access to the text of Scholz, except in
the edition published by Taylor and Walton. This places a period after
σάρκα, _flesh_; which, however, it also gives in the text as the
pointing of Griesbach, contrary to the only other edition I have at
present the opportunity of examining.

Footnote 146:

See Appendix for a fuller examination of these two passages, viz., the
Proem of St. John’s Gospel, and Rom. ix. 5.

Footnote 147:

And especially since Mr. Byrth has alluded to the disapprobation with
which the sentiment was received.

Footnote 148:

Christian Teacher, New Series, No. I, pp. 31, 32.

Footnote 149:

By this I mean a God who cannot forgive except by one
process—advantage of which must be taken by an act of faith—it being
always uncertain whether the faith is right or sufficient.

Footnote 150:

We find in the first beginnings of the Trinity, the Logos and the Holy
Spirit identified. This is even angrily contended for by Tertullian.
“What! when John said that the Logos was made flesh, and the angel”
(respecting the miraculous conception) “that the Spirit was made
flesh, did they mean any thing different?”—_Tertullian, Advers.
Praxeam._ Cap. xxvi.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE IV.

“THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN,
THE MAN CHRIST JESUS.”

BY REV. HENRY GILES.

“THERE IS ONE GOD, AND ONE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN, THE MAN CHRIST
JESUS.”—1 _Tim._ ii. 5.

The passage I have read suggests the subject of my lecture, the position
in which we stand to our opponents will suggest the tendency of the
commentary. The text announces the two great truths on which our entire
system of Christianity is based, and ours in all essential points, we
think, coincides with simple, with evangelical Christianity. The truths
propounded in the text are, the Unity of God, and the Unity of Christ.—A
unity in each case absolute and perfect, without division of nature or
distinction of person. We believe that God is one,—that he is one being,
one mind, one person, one agent. And this belief, and no other, we can
deduce from the works of creation, and the teachings of the Scriptures.

That God is one universally and absolutely, we have impressed upon us
from the order of creation; that he is great, we learn from the
magnitude of his works; and that he is good, we learn from their
blessedness and beauty. This sublime truth is illustrated in every
region of existence, so far as we know it, and every illustration is an
argument. It is written on the broad and immortal heavens in characters
of glory and light; it is manifested in that mighty law which binds atom
to atom into a world, and world to world in a system, and system to
system, until from that wonderful universe which science can traverse,
we arise to him, whom no knowledge can fathom, whom no limits can bound,
and in contemplating whom science must give place to faith.

The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament showeth his
handy-work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth
knowledge—and that God is one, is proclaimed in this speech, and
manifested in this knowledge. It gleams in the light, it breathes in the
air, it moves in the life of all created nature; it is the harmony of
creation, and the spirit of providence, the inspiration of reason, and
the consistency of wisdom. The existence of one Supreme Intelligence is
the Testimony of Nature, and to the same import are the testimonies of
Scripture. We are told, and told it in every variety of tone, that to
believe one God in three persons is absolutely needful to Salvation, yet
we may read from Genesis to Revelations without finding such a doctrine
either as a statement of truth, or a means of sanctity: but the simple
and unqualified declaration that God is one, without any of these
dogmatical distinctions which men of later ages have invented, I need
not tell a Bible-reading audience, are interwoven with the whole texture
of revelation. It was that for which Abraham left his home, and went
forth a wanderer from his family and his nation; it was that for which
Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, and for which
he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God; it was that
over which he had long thought in his shepherd-life in an Arabian
wilderness; it was that with which he was more deeply inspired in the
solemn retirements of Mount Horeb; it was that to which all his laws and
institutions pointed. Our Saviour took the doctrine as a known maxim—and
in this his disciples followed him. We have then the truth brought down
to us through Scripture, in patriarchal tradition, in Mosaic
legislation, in the poetry of prophets, in the words of Christ, in the
preaching of apostles,—and we have it brought down to us without one of
those distinctions with which it has been since surrounded by
theological ingenuity. We are zealous in the assertion of it, not for
its mere metaphysical correctness, but for its moral power and its moral
consistency. It does not divide our hearts, and it does not confuse our
heads. It leads our minds up to one spirit, infinite in power, infinite
in wisdom, and infinite in goodness. Without confusion or perplexity we
can trace God in all and all in God: in the atom that trembles in a
sunbeam, as in the planet that moves in boundless light, from the blush
of a flower to the glory of the heavens—from the throb of an insect to
the life of an immortal. The Unitarian faith in the universal father is
clear, simple, and defined; inflicting no violence on our
understandings, and raising no conflicts in our affections. One, and one
in the strictest sense, is our parent, one is our sovereign, one is our
highest benefactor, one is our protector and our guide, one is our
deliverer and sanctifier; one has bestowed all we possess, one alone can
give all we hope for; one is holy who demands our obedience; one is
merciful who pities our repentance; one is eternal in whose presence we
are to live, and therefore whether we present our adorations in
dependence, or bow down in submission, or send forth our praises in
gratitude, there is one, and but one, to whom our aspirations can
ascend, and to whom our hearts can be devoted. Thus impressed, we must
feel united to one Father in filial obedience, and to all men in a
common and fraternal relationship; we cannot look upon some as selected,
and upon others as outcasts; we cannot look upon some as purchased, and
upon others as reprobate; we cannot look upon some as sealed with the
spirit of grace for ever unto glory everlasting, and upon others as
abandoned, unpitied, and unprotected, the victims of an everlasting
malediction. We regard men as bound in a community of good, consequently
as bound in a community of praise; we regard them as struggling in like
trials, and therefore indebted to each other for mutual sympathy; we
regard them as heirs of the same glory, and on the level of their
heavenly hopes, standing on a basis of sacred and eternal equality. If
these sentiments are false, they are at least generous, and it is not
often that generosity is found in company with falsehood. Alas, how many
heart-burning enmities, how many deadly persecutions have been caused by
different apprehension of God’s nature or God’s worship; how often have
these differences broken all the fraternal bonds of humanity, made man
the greatest enemy to man,—more savage and cruel than the beast, yea,
and cruel in proportion to the zeal he pretended for his God. But never
could this have been, had men believed in God, had men believed in
Christ—had they believed in God as an impartial and universal Father,
had they believed in Christ as an equal and universal brother.—Then we
could have all sent our mingled prayers to the skies, and with a
Christianity as broad as our earth, and as ample as our race, and
generous as the soul of Jesus, we could have taken all mankind to our
heart. We maintain it not in mere abstract speculation, but because we
consider it a positive and a vital truth. Were the point metaphysical
and not moral, we conceive it would be little worthy of dispute—and in
that sense I for one would have small anxiety, whether God existed in
three persons or in three thousand. In like manner we hold the simple
and absolute unity of Christ; a unity of nature, a unity of person, and
a unity of character. But as this topic is to occupy so large a space in
the present lecture, I shall here forbear from further comments.

The statement of our subject in a text, was alluded to by the Christ
Church Lecturer, in a tone that at least approached to censure. But we
consider it amongst our privileges, that we can express our main
principles in the simple and obvious language of Scripture; and if in
this case deep scholarship and acute criticism be needed to give it to
common minds a meaning different from that in which we understand it,
the fault certainly is not ours.—Neither, indeed, is ours the blame, if
a similar phraseology pervades the whole Christian Scriptures; that in
every page we read of God and Christ, and never of God in three persons,
or of Christ in two natures. To find out such distinctions, we leave to
Scholastic ingenuity; to give them definition and perpetuity, we consign
to the framers of creeds and articles—and to receive and reverence them
we turn over to the admirers of Athanasian perspicuity. We take the New
Testament as the best formulary; we are satisfied with a religion direct
and simple in its principles, and we long not for a religion of
deducibles. We have been accused of tortuous criticism; and although we
desire not to retort the accusation on our opponents, so far I mean, as
it implies moral delinquency, we cannot forbear observing that the
intellectual sinuosities by which some of these deductions have been
drawn from the New Testament is to us, certainly, a subject of not a
little admiration. Our motive in selecting this text was the best of all
which governs men in the use of language, simply that with greatest
brevity and greatest perspicuity, it enunciates our opinions. Our
opponents, however, have no right to complain; the advantage of being
first in the field was on their side, and the struggle was not provoked
on our part but on theirs: they of course selected their own subjects,
and they suggested ours. They could, therefore, have had no uncertainty
either as to our views or interpretation of the text. I would not allude
to a matter so small, were it not for the contradictory delinquencies
with which Unitarians are accused—one time they are charged with
dreading an appeal to Scripture, and when by the very title of their
subject, they tacitly appeal to Scripture, there is wanting still no
occasion to blame.

What, in Unitarian views, is Christ the Man, and what is Christ the
Mediator, shall make the subject of the present Lecture.

I.—First, I beg your attention to the enquiry as to what we believe of
Christ as man. To this we answer, that in his nature we think him simply
and undividedly human; that in his character we regard him morally
perfect. We cannot recognize in Christ a mixture of natures, and we
wonder that any who read the gospel’s records can. That he was simply
and merely human, is a conclusion which meditation on these Records but
fixes more profoundly on our understandings, and makes more precious to
our faith. We derive the conclusion from Christ’s own language—“Ye seek
to kill me,” he says, “a _man_—which hath told you the truth, which I
heard of God.”—Again, when a worldly and ambitious individual, mistaking
the true nature of this kingdom, desired to become his disciple: “The
foxes, said Jesus, have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but
the Son of man hath not whereon to lay his head.” Instances, too many to
repeat, might be enumerated; but the only other I shall adduce is that
in which Christ’s human nature speaks from its deepest sorrows, and its
strongest love: when Jesus, as he hung upon the Cross, saw his mother
and the disciple whom he loved standing by, he saith unto his mother,
“Woman, behold thy son.” It is vain to tell us of an infinite God veiled
behind this suffering and sweetness, the mind repels it, despite of all
the efforts of theology.[151]

The impression of a simple humanity was that which he left on the mind
of his countrymen. What other impression could they have of one whom
they daily saw amongst them as of themselves? who came weary to rest in
their habitations; who came hungry to sit at their boards; whom they met
in their streets sinking with fatigue; whom they might see upon their
wayside asking drink from a well; one whom they saw weep over their
troubles and rejoice in their gladness. Nay, the very intenseness of his
humanity became a matter of accusation. To many it seemed subversive of
religion. That spirit which sympathized with human beings, in their joys
and woes, which not only loved the best, but would not cast out the
worst, was what those of strait and narrow hearts could not understand.
He came eating and drinking, and they called him a man gluttonous and a
wine-bibber. Had he said long prayers at the corners of their streets,
and been zealous for the traditions of the fathers, they would have
revered him as a saint. Those who were panoplied in their own spiritual
sufficiency knew not how he could be the friend of sinners; how he could
associate with the deserted and the excommunicated; how he could take to
his compassion the weary and the heavy-laden. The pharisee who proudly
asked him to his house, but gave him no salute, no oil for his stiffened
joints, and no water for his parched feet, had nothing within him
whereby to interpret the feeling of Jesus towards her who anointed his
head with ointment, washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with
the hairs of her head. Yes, it was this truth and fulness of humanity
which made Jesus hateful to the pharisees, but loved and blessed by the
poor; it was this that made the common people hear him gladly, and gave
his voice a power which they never felt in the teachings of the scribes;
which drew crowds around him, in wilderness and mountain, that hung
raptured on the glad tidings which he preached. The flatterers of Herod
on a particular occasion cried out, “It is the voice of a god and not of
a man;” but no one ever thought of insulting Jesus with such an
exclamation.

The guilt of the Jews in crucifying Christ has been alluded to in the
present controversy. But this is only an additional proof that Jesus
left no other conviction on the minds of his countrymen than that he was
simply a man. That our views diminish this guilt has been urged as a
powerful objection against us; but, with reverence I say it, the
objection turns more against Christ himself. Either then he was simply
man, or being Deity, he suppressed the evidence which would prove it,
and allowed this people to contract the awful guilt of killing a
God-man. If the first be true, the guilt asserted has no existence; if
the second, I leave you to judge in what light it places the sincerity
and veracity of an incarnate Deity. There is neither declaration nor
evidence afforded by Christ by which the Jews could think him more than
man. On the contrary he disclaims expressly the far lower honour at
which they thought his presumption aimed, by a quotation from their own
Scriptures: “It is written in your law” he observes, “I said ye are
Gods. If he called them Gods, unto whom the word of God came (and the
Scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him whom the Father hath
sanctified and sent into the world, thou blasphemest, because I said I
am the Son of God.”[152] There is then no declaration, nor yet is there
evidence. Miracles were not such: for the Jewish mind and memory were
filled with instances of these, and to the performers of which they
never thought of attributing a nature above humanity. If Christ was
more, the fact should have been plainly manifested, for the idea of a
God in a clothing of flesh was one not only foreign but repugnant to
every Jewish imagination. The difference between the Jews and pagans in
this particular is not a little striking. Jesus raised the dead before
their eyes, and yet they thought him but a man having great power from
the Creator. Paul, in company with Barnabas, healed a cripple at Lystra,
and the populace cried out, “The Gods are come down to us in the
likeness of men.” When Paul in Melita shook without harm the viper from
his hand, the spectators who at first considered him a murderer, changed
their minds, and said that he was a God. In proportion then to the
natural and religious repugnance which the Jews had to humanize the
divinity, should there have been clearness in the proof of it on the
part of Jesus. No such proof was given.

The greatest miracles of Jesus disturbed not the conviction of the Jews
in his simple human nature. The woman of Samaria, wondering at once at
his charity and his knowledge, called her neighbours to see a _man_ who
told her all things whatsoever she did. She asked them, then is not this
the Christ? The blind man awakened by his touch from thick darkness into
the marvellous light of God’s creation describes him but as a _man_ who
anointed his eyes. The Jewish officers struck dumb before his wisdom,
declare that never _man_ spake like this _man_. The Jews who stood
around him and saw Lazarus, whose body had been already dissolving, come
forth quickened from the grave, beheld in him but the powerful and the
loving friend. The multitudes of Judea, who in desert and city were
amazed at his wonderful works, simply “glorified God who had given such
power unto men.”

Similar was the impression which he left upon his intimate friends. What
would have been their emotions had they a belief that continually they
were in the bodily presence of the incarnate God? How would they not
have bowed themselves in the dust, and stopped the familiar word as it
trembled on their lips? Instead of approaching with unfearing hearts,
how would they not have stood afar off and apart, and gazed with awe
upon a being who was pacing a fragment of the world he created, instead
of clinging to him as one of themselves? Whenever they saw his
mysterious appearance, would they not call on the mountains to fall upon
them, and the hills to cover them? But not so was it. The lowly, the
humble, and the poor rejoiced to see him, and were glad when he entered
their habitations. They were consoled by the benediction of peace with
which he sanctified his approach and his departure. For him was the
gratulations of loving friends, and for him were the smiles of little
children. In Bethany, Martha, when he came, was busy in much serving,
and the meek and gentle Mary sat at his feet to drink in his heavenly
wisdom. At the last supper John leaned upon his bosom. At the cross,
when the head of Jesus bent heavily in anguish, and solitary torture was
wearing away his life, there again we meet the same disciple, there also
we meet the mother of Jesus and the grateful Magdalene, all three
oppressed with darkest affliction and despair. Some of them we again
behold at the sepulchre in utmost alarm. Now this grief at the cross and
this perplexity at the tomb is consistent with no other supposition than
that they regarded him simply as a man. Why else should they have been
afflicted? What though his enemies were strong, if knowing him to be
God, they must also have known that his power was boundless and his
triumph certain. This sorrow and uncertainty, I repeat, can have no
other foundation than a belief in his simple humanity. And surely if his
mother had only such impression, it is hard to expect that the Jews at
the time, and many Christians since, could have had any other.

I anticipate the objection that the glories of his deity were concealed,
and that this concealment was necessary to his mediatorial work. I
answer then, that when he had departed, and when such a secresy was no
longer needful, his apostles on some of the most solemn occasions merely
asserted his humanity, on occasions, too, when, if he were God as well
as man, the whole truth were to be expected. Paul,[153] in announcing
him as the great and final judge of the world, calls him no more than
man. Nor does his language assume a higher import when he speaks of him
as the pattern and pledge of immortality.[154] No other conclusion is to
be drawn from the address of Peter to Cornelius; and if a belief of
Christ’s deity be necessary to salvation, the centurion might, for
anything Peter asserted, have gone direct to perdition.[155] Still more
remarkable is it, that in this apostle’s first public address after the
departure of his master to the skies, we have nothing more than the same
declaration. The occasion and the circumstances not only justified, but
demanded the highest announcement that could be made respecting Christ.
The disciples had just seen him taken up into heaven, and the awe of the
ascension was yet upon their hearts. He who had trod this weary earth in
many sorrows was taken from their sight. They who had recently seen his
blood streaming warmly on Calvary, had come fresh from the glory of
Olivet. He who had been their suffering companion and instructor was now
their blessed and triumphant master. Alone in the midst of a gainsaying
and persecuting world, with gladness solemnized by reverence, and
victory tempered by grief, they had assembled to await the promised
Comforter. After that event they were to be separated, and each was to
take his own path in the moral wilderness that stretched far and
desolately before him. The Spirit of Promise came. The cloven tongues of
fire fell upon them: that beautiful emblem of the eloquent spirit of the
gospel that was to carry light and heat to the hearts of all
generations, and through every language of earth; that beautiful emblem
of a Christianity which might exist in many forms, but be at the same
time enlightened and enflamed by the soul of a common charity.
Multitudes from all nations were collected in the Holy City;—under the
influence of recent and solemn events Peter rises to address them. The
tragedy of Calvary was yet fresh in the general imagination, the stain
of a slave and malefactor’s death was still dark on the forehead of
Christianity. This surely was the time to cover the ignominy that lay on
the humanity of Jesus by proclaiming the resplendent glory of his
godhead. This was especially to be expected from Peter. He had on a
preceding occasion spurned the idea of such a shameful death, though
coming from Christ’s own lips; now was the time to pour the glory of the
God over the humiliation of the man; he too, who in an hour of weakness
denied his master, was the one who in the time of his strength and
repentance would be most ready to vindicate and assert his highest
honour. It is said that the apostles were not thoroughly inspired, and
did not fully know Christ before the day of Pentecost. But this was the
day of Pentecost. If, besides, it was the speaker’s object—as indeed it
must have been—that Christ should be rightly and widely known, now was
the opportunity to send forth his name and nature through every kingdom
and in every tongue. If, according to the doctrine some time since
propounded in Christ Church, the sin of the Jews was dark in proportion
to the grade of being in which we place the Saviour, now was the time,
while the event was recent, to strike their hearts with terror and
compunction. Contrast, then, these natural, these fair and unexaggerated
expectations, with the actual speech of Peter, and without a word of
comment the contrast is itself the strongest argument. “Ye men of Israel
hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by
miracles, and wonders, and signs which God did by him in the midst of
you, as ye yourselves know: him being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands
have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up, having loosed the
pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of
it.” (Acts ii. 22, 24.) Had you been listeners to this address, I ask
your candour, I ask your intellect, could you conceive that the apostle
was speaking, not of a glorified man, but of an incarnate Deity? No,
certainly.

The testimony of Peter thus clearly given, is more and more confirmed as
we look upon the life of Jesus. In every stage of that life we see him
human, and though in all moral purity and moral grandeur, yet _simply_
human. We are not ashamed of our belief. No, we glory in it, and we
rejoice in it. We glory in it, for it is the proof that the elements of
our nature can be moulded into such beauty; and we rejoice in it, for it
is the proof that he who left a religion for the immortal heart of man
was himself purely and simply of the nature he would sanctify. We see
him as the infant cradled in Bethlehem, the nurseling hanging on a
mother’s care, and we escape the moral and intellectual confusion of
joining the omnipotence of a God with the feebleness of a babe. We see
him in maturer years in his social relations and social intercourse
casting a holy light around him, and spreading the influence of all that
is most blessed in human affections. We destroy not the virtue of the
man by absorbing it in the glory of the God. Human, and _only_ human, we
see him in goodness, in duty, and in suffering. Even in his most
marvellous works of mercy, so harmonious is his power with our common
nature, that we feel as if they were merely ordinary acts of kindness.
When he compassionated the widow’s anguish and restored her son; when
pitying the blind, he opened their eyes to the joy and beauty of light;
when to the ears of the deaf he gave an inlet to the music of nature and
the voice of friendship; when he cast out the dumb spirit and unclosed
sealed lips in hymns of gratitude and praise; when he fed multitudes on
the mountain’s brow; when lepers went clean from his presence to their
fellows and their homes; when parents clung to their restored children,
and friends who had separated in despair met again in hope,—wonderful as
are all these events, we connect them with the _man_ Christ Jesus, the
real, simple, holy, and perfect man.

The lecturer in Christ Church stated three peculiarities which
distinguished the Unitarian from the orthodox belief in Christ’s
humanity. The third of these was his pre-existence. The Lecturer defined
with admirable accuracy the essentials of humanity, one of which, as
would be universally admitted, was _to be born_. I was therefore not
prepared to hear the proper humanity of Christ before he was born most
zealously defended. I look upon it, however, as a mere oversight, and no
doubt it will be corrected in the printed lecture.

The main point is, however, that of Christ’s pre-existence, which
independently of mistake in arrangement or expression is a fair topic of
argument and discussion. The Lecturer quoted a number of texts from the
evangelist John,—from any other of the gospel-writers he could not have
taken the shadow of a proof: these he seemed to think invincible
evidence. Good scholars, however, and candid critics, aye, and honest
Christians, have found such explanations of these expressions as
satisfied both their intellects and their conscience. Orthodox
commentators are aware that the idiom of the New Testament frequently
uses the tense grammatically past to signify events which are actually
future. I ask those critics what they have urged, what they usually
urge, against Roman Catholic controversialists, who, in proving the
doctrine of transubstantiation, quote the text, “This is my body which
is broken for you.” What says the Protestant opponent? Oh, it is a mere
idiomatic expression, by which an event is represented as complete which
is yet to be accomplished. In like manner and with a like
interpretation, we hear the orthodox use the phrase, “The lamb _slain_
from the foundation of the world.” They have in this case no scruple to
speak of that as actually existing which was merely contemplated in
eternal foreknowledge. If it be said that all events are present to the
mind of God, so we answer are all persons; and so was Christ. This view
of the subject has satisfied many reflective, and whatever our opponents
may think, many able and honest minds. But I avail myself of this
opportunity to state distinctly and plainly, that though challenged by
our opponents in the title of their subject to discuss this point, it is
one on which Unitarians have great differences of opinion, but one which
would not disturb a moment’s harmony in Unitarian Churches. Personally
the Lecturers in the present controversy, on our side, do not believe
the pre-existence of Christ; but there are congregations and individuals
amongst us, with whom we hold, and wish to hold, kindly, brotherly, and
Christian communion, who cling to this doctrine most sacredly and most
reverently. We all agree in maintaining the absolute unity of God, and
if I may so speak, the CREATURESHIP of Christ. We desire to bind our
charity to no dogmas, and we simply say, with the Apostle, “Let every
man be persuaded in his own mind.”

On this point, and indeed in this discussion generally, I have observed
with great pain a disposition on the part of our opponents to connect
the venerable name of Priestley with odium. It is an unworthy office for
men of education in the nineteenth century. We take not the authority of
Priestley, nor of any other, except Jesus. One is our Master, even
_Christ_: and all we are brethren. But in venerating Priestley, yea, and
in loving his memory, we are guilty of no Sectarianism, we but agree
with the generous, the excellent, the enlightened of the earth: we but
agree with Robert Hall, a stern but eloquent Trinitarian, who in
allusion to the Birmingham riots, deprecated in glowing language the
insults offered to philosophy in “the first of her sons.” Both his
critical and his religious opinions are fair subjects for investigation
and opposition. But great sacrifices and honourable consistency should
render his moral character sacred, if any thing could melt the stony
heart of polemical austerity. When we hear, as lately we did hear, that
Priestley sought not for truth, but for arguments to sustain a system,
we are not only impelled to ask, with Pilate, “What is truth?” but also
to inquire, “Who are those who seek it?” One thing we do know, that if
he gave himself to a system, it was a devotion to one which had little
wherewith to recompense him; and we know also that as far as the good
things of this world is concerned, that he might have turned his
devotion to a far better purpose. Instead of having his home and his all
shattered in the storm of popular turbulence, instead of being left
houseless in the land of his nativity, he might have been great amongst
the heads of colleges, or first upon the bench of Bishops; instead of
being expatriated amidst vulgar execration, he might have spent his life
fairing sumptuously every day, clothed in purple and fine linen, with a
dignified hypocrisy; instead of burying his later sorrows in a foreign
land, and dropping there his last and most bitter tears, and leaving
there his venerable dust, and his still more venerable memory, to the
shame of England, and to the immortal honour of his most generous and
hospitable entertainers, we might now have had proposals for a national
monument to him, long lists of subscribers’ names, and loud clamours of
exulting praise. One consolation at least was left: his right hand was
clean, and had he been dragged to the stake he need never have thrust it
in the flame for having been the instrument to give signature to a lie,
from a beggarly, a dastardly, and a cowardly fear of death. If he could
look from where he lives in heaven, he would have a still nobler
consolation, in being aware that, despite of bigots, his name is
treasured in venerated recollection with the pious and philosophical of
all sects and parties—that to give him due and most beautiful
praise[156] was amongst the last earthly acts of a kindred spirit, but
of another soil, that fanatics may rant and rage, but the good will
love.—That when this, with such controversies in general, sink into the
common and oblivious grave to which all polemical divinity is doomed,
the good his invention have given to mankind will survive, and the
witness he has left of an upright conscience will be an everlasting
example.

The conviction of his reason, it is true, was so strong against the
pre-existence of Christ, that he would suppose the apostle misunderstood
the Saviour’s words, or the amanuensis mistranscribed the apostle’s
language. This was urged as a mighty accusation, as a most blasphemous
transgression. There are here an opinion and an alternative. The opinion
is the belief in Christ’s simple humanity; the alternative is merely to
suppose the want of memory in an evangelist, or the want of accuracy in
a copyist. Place in contrast to this Coleridge as quoted by our
opponents. He has also an opinion and an alternative—his opinion is,
that Christ was God, and his alternative is, that if _not God_ he was a
_deceiver_. If Dr. Priestley was wrong, he left not only Christ but his
apostles morally blameless—if Coleridge mistook, he attributed directly
and without compromise the want of even common honesty to the Author of
our religion: I leave you to judge between the two cases. I do not wish
to disparage erring and departed genius; but when the name of Coleridge
is called up in my mind in connection with that of Priestley, it is not
in human nature to avoid comparison. The one steeped the best part of
his life in opium, the other spent it in honourable toil; the one
squandered his brilliant and most beautiful genius in discursive efforts
and magical conversations, the other with heroic self denial shut
himself up in dry and laborious studies for the physical good, and the
moral wants of mankind; the one wrote sweet and wild and polished poesy
for their pleasure, the other has left discoveries for their endless
improvement. Yet orthodoxy builds for one the shrine of a saint, but
like those who in other days dug up the bones of Wickliff to be burned,
drags forth the memory of the other from the peaceful and forgiving
past, to inflict an execution of which we might have supposed his
lifetime had a sufficient endurance. Tranquil in the far-off and quiet
grave be the ashes of the Saint and Sage: his soul is beyond the
turmoils and battles of this fighting world. When these who are now in
strife shall be at last in union, his will not be the spirit to whom
that blessed consummation will give least enjoyment.

The preacher in Christ Church made some lengthened observations on the
two-fold nature of Jesus. This topic will more properly be included in
another lecture. I only mention it here for the purpose of making a
passing remark. The preacher’s language implied that among our reasons
for rejecting the doctrine is, that it is a mystery. Now we maintain
that a mystery is properly no doctrine, for it can be neither affirmed
or denied. The lecturer observed that there are mysteries in life and
nature. If by such he meant facts which we do not fully comprehend, or
ultimate facts beyond which we cannot penetrate, he is right. But of
these we assert nothing, of these we deny nothing. Intellectually or
spiritually they are in no sense subjects of contemplation. The
preacher, if my memory deceives me not, maintained that philosophy has
also mysteries. The principles or phenomena of Philosophy are not
mysteries—and so far as they are mysteries they are not philosophy. We
reject not the doctrine proposed to us on any such ground. We reject it,
not because we do not understand the terms in which it is expressed, but
because we _do_ understand them, and find them equally repugnant to
reason and to Scripture. We reject it because it does equal violence to
faith and intellect; we reject it, not only from the want of
consistency, but the want of evidence.

The apology for mystery made by the defenders of the incarnation has
been as often, as ably, and as successfully used by the advocates of
Transubstantiation. Among other questions, we are asked by both
parties—it is a favourite illustration—if we know how a grain of wheat
germinates and fructifies! Without hesitation we reply—no. And not only
do we not understand this _how_, but many others which might seem very
much simpler. But where, I ask, is the analogy? A grain of wheat is
buried in the earth, and the spirit of Universal Life prepares it for
reproduction, and in the harvest it comes forth abundantly multiplied,
to make glad the hearts of men. On this point I am equally willing to
confess my ignorance and my gratitude. All the facts are not known to
me, but such as I do know are perfectly consistent with each other. If I
am told that I know not how a grain of wheat germinates, I admit it
without hesitation; but I should certainly be startled if I were also
told, that besides being a grain of wheat it was also, by a mysterious
compound of natures, the Planet Herschel, or the archangel Michael. And
yet this does not amount by infinite degrees of self-contradiction to
the assertion, that the same being is God and man; that one part of the
nature is weary, and hungry, and thirsty, bowed down by every want and
grief, while the other is resting in peace and blessedness—that in the
same person there is one mind which is ignorant of that which is to come
in a day, and another in which reside the secrets of the universe, of
time, and of eternity.

The preacher, in speaking to Unitarians specially, commenced his address
to us in a tone of exhortation, and closed it in that of rebuke. And
what was the ground and subject of rebuke? Why, the smallness of our
numbers. He exhorted us on our want of humility, of modesty, in opposing
the whole Christian world. I wondered, if I were in a place of
Protestant worship, or if I heard an advocate for the right of private
judgment. My mind, as by a spell, was thrown back upon the early and
infant history of Christianity; I saw the disciples going forth on that
opposing world, of which their master had given them no enticing
picture; I saw Peter at Antioch, and Paul harassed and toil-worn at Rome
and Athens; I heard the cry of the vulgar, and the sarcasms of the
philosophical, going forth in prolonged utterance in condemnation of the
strange doctrine; I visioned before me the little knots of Christians,
bound to each other in love, holding their own faith, despite of
multitudes and despite of antiquity, fronting the world’s scorn and the
world’s persecution. I thought of Luther, standing, as he confessed,
against the world, an admission which was made one of the strongest
arguments against him,—an argument that there are piles of divinity to
maintain on the one side, and to repel on the other. I thought on the
persecution of the Waldenses and the Albigenses; I saw them, few, and
scattered, and shivering, and dying, in their Alpine solitudes: for
persecution, like the sun, enters into every nook. I thought of the
early struggle of Protestantism in this country,—of Latimer, of Cranmer,
and of Ridley; I thought of these honest and right-noble beings given,
by a barbarous bigotry, to a death of infamy; delivered over to the
fires of Smithfield; perishing amidst vulgar yells; not only abandoned,
but condemned, by episcopal domination. I remembered having read, in the
Life of Saint Francis Xavier, precisely similar objections made against
him by the bonzas of Japan. I also considered how many societies at
present send missionaries to the Heathen. I considered that, amidst the
populousness of India, the Brahmins might make a similar objection with
much greater force. Our fathers, they might say, never heard these
things; our people repudiate them.

But notwithstanding such general objections, we do not withhold our
admiration from Xavier and such self-denying men who were willing to
spend and be spent so that they might make known the glory of Christ; we
rejoice in seeing men thus forget their persons in love to their
principles, and in Doctor Carey standing alone, preaching under a tree
opposite to Juggernaut—we recognize with joy the impersonation of
Christian sincerity and Christian philanthrophy. If numbers were the
proof of truth, what changeful shapes might not truth assume to meet the
humour of the multitude! And we hear the immortal Chillingworth—the
first of logicians, the most charitable of polemics—thus replying to one
of his assailants: “You obtrude upon us,” says he, “that when Luther
began, he being yet but one, opposed himself to all, as well subjects as
superiors. If he did so in the cause of God it was heroically done of
him. This had been without hyperbolizing, _Mundus contra Athanasium et
Athanasius contra mundum_. Neither is it so impossible that the whole
world should so far lie in wickedness (as St. John speaks,) that it may
be lawful and noble for one man to oppose the world. But yet were we put
to our oaths, we should not surely testify any such thing for you; for
how can we say properly that he opposed himself to all unless we could
say also that all opposed themselves to him?” The same noble writer goes
on to say “that though no man before him lifted up his voice as Luther
did, yet who can assure us but that many before him both thought and
spake in the lower voice of petitions and remonstrances in many points
as he did?”—One fact at least must be conceded, and we are entitled to
any advantage it implies, that it is more painful and self-sacrificing
to be of the few than of the many, that there is far more to endure in
being a little flock, than of the great multitude; and that in
maintaining with all honesty our opinions in the face of the world’s
odium and the world’s revilings, in despite of popular outcry and
theological accusation, if no other virtues, we can surely claim those
of sincerity and fortitude, of moral courage and moral consistency.

The preacher alluded to the ransom which Christ paid for sinners, and
compared it to that which anciently was given in exchange for slaves.
The question is, to whom were mankind slaves? To whom or what was the
purchase-ransom to be paid? Was this slavery to sin, to Satan, or to
God? Whosoever or whatsoever held the captive, must, of course, receive
the price of redemption. To which of these was it due, and how holds the
analogy? I leave the subject with the lecturer.

I now turn to what is greatly more agreeable in this discussion, the
statement that we hold Christ to have been morally perfect. To this we
assent with all our conscience, with all our hope, and with all our
hearts. We regard him as pure and perfect in every thought and word. We
see him with a holy piety illuminating his whole character and conduct.
We see him, in solitude and society, holding communion with his Father
and our Father, his God and our God. We see him in darkest moments, in
periods of deepest anguish, maintaining a hopeful and a trustful spirit;
in every affliction holding true to his love for God and man. We see him
with a patience that toiled for all, and never tired. We see him
plodding through every thankless labour, which here can find no
recompense, except it be that wherein the act itself is a blessing to
the Spirit. We see him in vexation and sorrow; and, whilst we gaze upon
his tranquil brow, we feel our stormy passions silenced into peace. We
see him in his struggles and temptations, and we feel how poor and
pitiful are our deepest griefs or sorest trials compared with his. We
regard him in the greatness of his benevolence, and we hear from his
lips such words as never man spake before. We behold him, whose soul was
never tainted with sin, turn most mercifully on the repentant sinner,
striking the heart with rending anguish, yet filling the eye with
sweetest and most hopeful tears. We see him with a bosom throbbing with
all human charities, and an ear open to every cry of woe and
wretchedness. We see him in all unselfish sacrifices, and all generous
labours; and regarding our nature in him as most lovely, most glorious,
and most triumphant, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
We see him as the most perfect image of his Father; and the first, among
all his brethren, filled with the inspiration of God, and spreading it
forth abundantly on the souls of men.

Amongst other wrongs to Christ, we are accused of taking away all
motives of love to him. It may be fair, then, to ask, for what do
Trinitarians love him? And it may be also fair to ask, what is it in him
that moves their affections which may not equally move ours? They cannot
love Christ the God in the same sense or on the same grounds on which
they love Christ the man. For what, then, do they love Christ the man,
or Christ the mediator, for which, in that aspect, we may not love him
as deeply and as truly? Is it for his many and great labours? On even
the orthodox doctrine, these were the toils of the manhood and not of
the godhead. Is it for his sufferings? The God could not suffer, could
not be weary, could not be persecuted, could not die, could neither be
hooted nor crucified; if, therefore, all the strongest motives of love
to Christ be founded in his humanity, then I assert we have all these
motives. On any supposition, it was not the second person of the godhead
that bent his bleeding head on Calvary, it was the _man_ Christ Jesus.
If it be said that Unitarian views do not move the heart, we have only
with sorrow to confess, that no views of Christ’s nature or character
move us practically as they ought; and for the small results which his
doctrines have produced amongst us, we, with others, have reason to bend
down our heads in deepest humiliation: but we solemnly deny that our
convictions about Christ have any tendency to produce such an effect. In
the case of wrong, the fault is in ourselves, and not in our doctrines.

II. Having thus explained our views on Christ as a man, I shall occupy
the remaining part of this discourse by stating, as briefly as I can,
the difference between Trinitarians and ourselves on his character as a
mediator.

What are the religious needs of man? says the Trinitarian. Consequently,
What is the office of the Messiah? If we take the Calvinistic scheme,
and at present that is the most popular, the reply would be, or should
be, thus:—There is a decree of eternal election and reprobation by which
millions, before the foundation of the world, were destined to be saved
or lost. The numbers were fixed, and could neither be enlarged or
diminished. For the salvation of the elect, and these only, the second
person in the godhead became incarnate: them he purchased with his
blood, and the rest were left to perish. The elect entered into life
with the seal of predestination on their birth, redeemed, to be
justified, to be sanctified, and finally to be glorified. _The
remainder_ came into the same life burdened with the imputation of a sin
committed centuries previous to their existence. Foredoomed to
perdition, overpassed by the Father, and disregarded by the Son, and
unvisited by the Holy Spirit, they die in their sins, enter on their
predetermined destiny, and, to use the tremendous language of the
Athanasian Creed, “perish everlastingly.”

In this statement, I do no wrong to Calvinism, and scarcely justice. It
might easily be made more dark, and without a whit of controversial
exaggeration. But if this be a true idea of Christianity, it is a system
of terror and not of mercy, an anathema and not a blessing, the fiat of
universal wrath and not the words of universal mercy, the proclamation
from an austere and angry Deity and not a remedy for a weak and erring
humanity. Orthodoxy in this scheme, instead of endearing Christ to the
human heart, alienates and removes him from it; instead of making him an
encouragement, renders him a terror; instead of placing him before us as
the impersonation of almighty clemency, through him proclaims an
almighty vindictiveness; places Jesus out of the sphere of human
affections, and wrenches him from the worn and suffering heart of man.
On the orthodox principle, he is out from us, and not of us. He is alone
in his own mysterious nature. Our affections are perplexed, and our
heads are bewildered. To offer our sympathy, or to look for his, would
be the very climax of presumption. He is in no proper sense identified
with us, or allied to us. His example is more an accident than an
essential of his work. The substance of his work, on the orthodox
scheme, might have taken place in the most secret recesses of the
universe; and God would be satisfied, and the elect would be
redeemed.[157]

What, says Unitarianism, are the moral wants of man? Consequently, what
is the mediator he requires?

Religion, we maintain, was made for man, and not man for religion. The
mediator, therefore, which we require, is one who would guide and not
confound our nature; who would ennoble but not perplex it. We would look
for a mediator by whom we should receive the light and truth of God and
heaven to our souls. We need to see the capacities, the duties, and the
destinies of our kind, in one who is perfectly, but yet simply, of
ourselves. Our sorrows, our sufferings, and our darkness, we regard as
but so many reasons why our Redeemer and Saviour should be entirely of
our own kind. We require one who would manifest to all that God is
really interested in us. We require one who would show that we are not
shut out from communion with the infinite, the invisible, and the
future. We require one who would correct our evils, and yet resolve our
doubts. We require one who could sympathize with our weakness. We
require one who would show us of what our nature is capable, and thus
flash upon us the guilt of our deficiencies, or inspire us with the hope
of advancement. We are feeble, and need strength; we are tempted, and
need support. Jesus proves to us that the strength is in us, if we use
it; and that the support is at hand, if we choose to apply it. In our
transgressions, we are but too much inclined to yield to, or justify
ourselves with, a guilty sophistry; but our views of Jesus leave us no
room for such delusion. Whilst Trinitarianism places most of our
religious wants afar off and outside us, Unitarianism fixes them within
us. Whilst Trinitarianism demands a Christ which shall reconcile God to
us, Unitarianism holds a Christ which shall conform us to God:—to us his
word and work is a spirit of life, his word and work to them but dogma
or mystery.

Upon our views, Christ is properly a mediator; on those of orthodoxy, he
can bear no such character: compounded of Deity and humanity, he is
truly of neither. It is said that we have no need of Christ; that, in
fact, he has no purpose in our system; that he might be taken from it
without creating any loss. We maintain the contrary. We maintain that
Christ is our all in all; that he is the impersonation of our religion,
that he is bodily our Christianity. Whilst others principally regard him
in the retrospect, we have him as a present and a living reality. Whilst
others trust him for what he has done, we love him for what he was.
Whilst others make his nature the subject of hard and abstruse dogmas,
we hold it forth as the subject of affectionate contemplation. Whilst
others propose faith, we propose imitation as the greatest virtue. We
look upon him as the Instructor in our moral doubts; the enlightener of
our ignorance, which, in so many cases, press down our hearts respecting
the general course of Providence and our future destiny; of our
ignorance respecting God, and all that belongs to the future, the Past,
and the Invisible.

The Past, yea, and the present also, is filled, we confess, with
difficulties that alarm our fears, and call forth our sorrows. And it is
only when we look to Christ as really and simply human that we have any
tangible consolation, or any solid support. The trials or temptations or
sufferings of a God are not only repugnant to our reasons, but foreign
to our hearts. Such ideas can create no confidence, and therefore can
afford no ground of sympathy—and no ground of hope, of strength, or of
consolation. If one who is a God—were temptation to such a being
possible—overcomes temptation, on what grounds can any other conclude he
can resist it?—If one who is a God resists indignity with quietude and
calmness, on what ground can another make such conduct an example?—If
one who is a God meets agony and death with confident and fearless
mind—knowing that his life is safe in eternal beatitude—on what possible
principles of reason or expectation can this be a consolation or hope to
feeble mortals?—If a God by his own inherent power rise from the dead,
by what logic of faith or intellect are we to conclude _man_ as _man_ is
to live for ever? It is only then upon our principles that I think he
can properly fulfil the offices that pertain to his character as
Mediator, that he can be our Teacher, that he can be our Exemplar, that
he can be the Discloser of our duties and our destinies, that he can be
at the same time a revealer and a revelation, that he can be the
foundation of our hope and the source of our strength:—that he can, I
say, be our Teacher; for what is necessary to the position of a moral
instructor? not merely to be able to announce truth, but to announce it
with living effect. The being who suffered no pain would have no power
in preaching fortitude. Sympathy is necessary to confidence, and
confidence is necessary to moral influence. Christ in his simple
humanity has a power which we could not give to him, supposing he was of
a compound constitution. Without this belief that he was simply and
naturally man, his instructions have small effect, and his actions have
no reality.—Moreover, I assert it is only in this view he can be our
exemplar, I mean the ideal, or representative of what we ought to be, or
of what in a more perfect condition we will be: for it is utterly and
outrageously absurd to propose as the pattern of human conduct or human
hopes, one who had in the same person the might and security of a Deity
with the dangers and the trials of a man: and in truth it is
outrageously absurd to say he could have such dangers and trials at
all,—it would not be a mystery but a mockery:—and, lastly, I contend,
that it is our views—weakly I have expressed them—which bring to the
human spirit most of strength and most of comfort. They give consistency
and sublimity to his communion with God, and to his revealings of
another world. They give immeasurable value to his miracles. They put
the seal of divine confirmation on his resurrection as the pledge of
human immortality. He is then our Instructor in every doubt; our
Consolation in every sorrow; our Strength in the griefs of life, and our
Support in the fears of death. We see him in his own ennobling and
sanctifying human nature, and by his impressive and vital energy sending
out from him the power for its redemption.

The character of God, as revealed in Christ’s teaching, and manifested
by Christ’s life, in the Unitarian faith, is not only discerned with a
clearer light, but commands a more sacred reverence, as well as a more
willing love. He that hath seen me, says the Saviour, hath seen the
Father. Now we believe this expression to be full of profoundest truth,
if we receive it as a moral revelation; but orthodoxy reduces it to a
mystical enigma, and robs it of meaning and of value. We discern God
through Christ as a Father, universal, merciful, good, holy, and
all-powerful. This we collect from the teachings of Christ; we could
never deduce it from the teachings of Calvinism. If we turn to the
teachings of Christ, we hear of a Father impartial and unbounded; if we
turn to the teachings of Calvinism, we read of a God that, in any
benignant sense, is but father to a few, and these few purchased by the
agonies of innocence; if we turn to the teachings of Christ, we are
instructed of a Father who is merciful, and that mercy is proposed to us
as the most perfect object of imitation; if we turn to the teachings of
Calvinism, we are told of a Father who properly cannot be merciful at
all, for the good he gives has been purchased, and is the equivalent of
a price; a Father, I repeat, whose good-will is paid for; the primary
element in whose character, as drawn in many popular creeds and
formularies, is a stern wrath, falsely called justice; the imitation of
which, in the creature, would turn earth into a darker hell than ever
theology visioned. If we turn to the teachings of Christ, we find in
them a Father supremely good, holding towards all his creatures a
benignant aspect; who, when his children ask for bread will not give
them a stone,—who casts with equal hand the shower and the sun-shine;
who rules in the heavens with glory, and in earth with bounty; who hears
the raven’s cry as well as the Seraph’s song. If we turn to Calvinism we
are informed of a Deity who has seen the ruin and the wreck of his own
workmanship, and pronounced a curse over that which he did not choose to
prevent; we are told that all creatures sicken under that original
curse; that earth feels it to her centre; that it spreads a frown over
heaven, and roars with a voice of destruction in the thunder and the
tempest; that living creatures throughout all their countless tribes,
suffer by it; that it pursues man from the first tears of infancy to the
last pang of death. If we turn to the teachings of Jesus, we are taught
that God is most holy; we are placed before that invisible Being who
searches the heart, and sees it in its last recesses. Thus piercing to
the very source of action, Christ makes guilt and holiness inward and
personal, inflicts on the criminal the full penalty, and secures to
rectitude its great reward: covering the one with moral hideousness, and
the other with exceeding beauty. If we turn to the teachings of
Calvinism, sin is contracted by imputation, and righteousness is
acquired by imputation also. The lost endure the penalty of guilt in
their own persons, the elect endure it by substitution, in the person of
another. If we turn to the teachings of Jesus, we have a Father whose
power is infinite as his goodness, in which we trust for the redemption
and perfection of the universe. If we turn to the teachings of
Calvinism, we see God consigning a vast portion of his rational creation
to eternal sin and misery, and therefore, if we would save his
benevolence we are constrained to sacrifice his power. Christ, Saint
Paul declares, is the image of God; but if the Father be the avenger,
and Christ the victim, he is not his image, but his contrast, and then
our souls, instead of ascending to God in love, turn from him, and fix
all their sympathies on Christ. As Unitarians apprehend him, we conceive
him in perfect union with the Father, imaging, with resplendent
sweetness, the attributes of his Father’s character. In the compassion,
in the benevolence, in the purity, and in the miracles of Christ, we
have revealed to us the goodness, the holiness, and the power of God;
upon the calm and gracious countenance of Jesus we may read the glory of
God, and, as in a stainless mirror, behold the scheme of his providence.

Place these views side by side with common experience and human feeling,
and which, I ask, is the most consistent? Who, in a healthy state of
mind, has any compunction because Adam sinned—but who, with his moral
emotions awakened, is not anxious to know what is the duty of man here,
and what his destiny hereafter? By which scheme, I inquire, are these
momentous problems best resolved? Testing these views by the common
experience to which I have appealed, taking its ordinary convictions as
the standard, I may fairly inquire, whether our principles are not
consistent in their hopes, and high and pure in their consolations?
Comparing each with the history and life of Christ, I have no doubt of
what would be the result, if system or dogmatism did not interfere with
our convictions. Regarding Christ as our perfect, immortal, but human
Brother, we have the living evidence that God is our Father, and Heaven
is our Home.—Our views of Christ makes his history of most precious
value to us—his life, his death, his crucifixion and his
resurrection—Christ becomes to us the great interpreter of Providence,
equally of its fears and hopes. He becomes to us the symbol of humanity,
equally of its grief and glory—near his cross we weep over death, and at
his tomb we rejoice in the certainty of life. In Christ crucified, we
see our nature in its earthly humiliation; in Christ glorified, we
behold it in its immortal triumph. As Jesus on the cross sets forth our
sorrow, so Jesus from the tomb sets forth our hope. Identified with
Jesus in the one, we are also identified with him in the other. We
behold “the man,” and in that man we behold the two solemn stages of our
nature, the struggle of affliction and the glory of success.—We see the
man of sorrow and the man of joy—the man of earth, and the man of
heaven—the man of death and the man of immortality. We are made more
assured of that doctrine to which we fly in every painful turn of
life—and in which we seek a deeper and kinder refuge as years and
troubles gather over us. Without this persuasion we feel ourselves
creatures weak and desolate; when our pleasures here have sunk, when our
hopes here have long since died, how much would we, in this wilderness,
desire to lay our heads, as Jacob did, on a cold stone, if like Jacob we
beheld an opened heaven; but how much more sweetly may we look upon the
risen and the living face of Jesus. He was of ourselves. He was
identified with us. I see then in Jesus, not the illustration of an
argument or of a theory. I see in him the embodiment of human goodness,
human affections, and human hopes, and human capacities, and human
destinies. When, especially, I think of human suffering, some necessary
and some blameless,—when I behold the ignorant and the vicious, the
ignorant and the wretched pining away in a crowded solitude,—when I see
the man of weary years and many adversities, seeking at last but some
spot in which to die,—when I see a sickened wretch, tired of existence,
poor, indigent, cold and naked, the victim of almost every want and
grief, toiling through life and shivering into death,—when I see
laborious age, after few enjoyments of either soul or sense, lying at
last on the bed where the weary are at rest, where at last the still
small voice of Christ is more desired than all the logic of
polemics,—when I see multitudes with dead, or dormant, or perverted
energies—benevolent ardour wasted, or most honourable philanthropy
defeated,—when I consider the thousands, and the tens of thousands of
human beings chained to a dark fatality in the destiny of moral and
physical circumstances—the ignorance, the bondage, the cruelties, the
unrevealed wretchedness without a name heaped on the heads of myriads,
generation after generation,—when I think of unspeaking and unspeakable
agonies lurking in every corner of civilized society—hereditary penury,
unavoidable ruin, unforeseen misfortune, the pangs of noble minds
struggling in vain against dependence; the writhings of dying hearts,
concealing their last sighs from watching friends, the stifled laments
of honest virtue cast forth on over-grown cities and populations, where
sufferer after sufferer sink unheard in the noise of indifferent
millions,—when I remember unrewarded toil, fine spirits crushed, and
fair names blighted,—when I see the enjoyment of the worthless and the
prosperity of the vicious, the success of the worst passions, and the
basest plans, the triumph of wickedness over truth and virtue,—when I
reflect seriously and solemnly on the strange sights which this world
has seen—the persecutor on the throne and the martyr at the stake, the
patriot on the scaffold and the tyrant on the bench—the honest man
ruined, and the villain the gainer,—I have before me, I admit, a dark
and startling problem. In the dying Christ I have the difficulties: in
the risen Christ I have their solution. In Christ on the cross I see our
crucified humanity—in Christ risen and ascending I see the same humanity
glorified; at the cross of Jesus my heart would sink, but at his empty
grave my hope is settled and my soul at ease. I go to that vacant tomb,
and there I am shown that the bands of death are loosed, and the gates
of glory are lifted up. Near Jesus on the cross, I have but thick clouds
and darkness; in Jesus risen the shadows are melted, and the gloom is
lost in brightness, and the sun which burst it shines forth more
resplendent—the blackness of the sky breaks forth into light, and the
wrath of the ocean softens into peace, the curtain of mist is folded up,
and a lovely world bursts upon my gaze. When I stand at the cross I have
man imaged in fears, in struggles and in death. I have around me our
nature in its crimes and passions; but when I see the ascending and
glorified Christ, I behold humanity in its most triumphant hopes:—When I
stand over the silent tomb of Jesus, and would weep, as if all beneath
and beyond the skies were hopeless, a light shines out from the
darkness, and throws a halo of peace about the desponding soul. In
Christ crucified, believing him human, simply human, I feel around me
the right of man—in Christ risen, believing him also human, I exult in
unclouded and unsetting light:—near Christ crucified, I tremble with
exceeding fear; near Christ glorified, I am comforted with exceeding
joy—and in each case because I feel he is truly and simply human.

In both parts of his life and history we have opposing aspects of
Providence. But if in his sufferings we have the pillar of cloud, in his
glory we have the pillar of fire; and in this wilderness pilgrimage we
are saddened and solemnized by the one,—enlightened and guided by the
other. Christ crucified and Christ glorified, united in our faith and
feelings, identified with our nature, our history, and our race, opens
views to the Christian’s soul, not only of consolation but of triumph,
that defy expression. It pours light and hope and dignity on universal
destiny and on every individual condition. In analogy with God’s
material creation in its workings, it shows glory arising out of
humiliation, and renovated beauty from apparent destruction—it shows in
man as in nature—the world of grandeur, of purity, and of softness—born
in the throes of chaotic formation; the streams of spring filled with
the year’s rejoicing gushing out of the frozen fountains of winter; the
fresh, and bright, and peaceful morning generated in the midnight storm.
If these views of Christ are seated in our hearts and faith: if we truly
identify ourselves with one as with the other: feeling that in each case
Christ is simply and perfectly our brother,—what can deaden our hope,
and what can sever us from duty? Though friends be absent and enemies be
fierce, and pain wreck our frames and poverty lay bare our dwellings,
and disappointment wait on our struggles, and grief thicken heavily on
our souls, in Christ suffering there is our worst extremity; in Christ
glorified there is that worst extremity redeemed into the fulness of
salvation; in Christ we see personified our entire humanity, except its
sins; in him we behold its subjection and its triumph. View its pains in
his humiliation, and its future prospects in his victory, and what a
glory does it not spread upon our race? Is there a single track of the
past on which it does not rain showers of light—on which it does not
leave the persuasion of immortal and universal existence? By Christ’s
doctrines and his life we are led to the conclusion that no human
existence has been ever spent in vain; that of all the vast ocean of
intelligent beings with which generations have flooded the earth; that
in that vast universe of life, one heart has never panted without a
purpose; that no thought ever started into being, not a throb of misery,
not a solitary charity, not a silent prayer, not an honest effort, not a
fervent wish or desire, not a single good intention, not a single
instance of sacrifice or worth, ever existed to be destroyed, but that
on the contrary they have been transferred to more genial scenes in
another world, and left seeds for better fruits in this. Believing on
Christ the crucified and the glorified, and still regarding him as the
image of God, it is pleasant to dwell equally upon the past and upon the
future; to think of the good and true who suffered here for virtue,
collected hereafter in all the unity of peace, having escaped the
fightings of earth, settled in the joys of heaven. But why confine
ourselves to the excellent and the great? The glory of Christ proclaims
life to all; it attracts to itself whosoever lived or suffered on earth,
all that ever will live or suffer. Into what a glory has Christ then not
entered: go to the most seclusive church-yard: worlds there moulder in
the smallest space; within its range as many sleep as might have peopled
an empire, and in a few steps we may walk over millions. Beneath those
pacings what parents and children, and companions, have mouldered? What
friendships, and hopes, and energies have melted in this simple dust?

But why say a Church-yard? All earth is a grave. The world is sown with
bodies: is futurity as filled with souls? Is this spot on which we
breathe for a moment a mere speck between two eternities of infinite
nothingness? Have the generations as they vanished, sunk into eternal
sleep, so that “_It is finished_,” should be the proper epitaph of all
departed humanity? Christ alone gives the full solution of this awful
problem; and this solution is clear and consolatory, as we feel him to
be of ourselves. He is thus the great type of our death and of our life,
throwing light over the grave, and opening to our faith a growing and
everlasting future,—where all exist, the great and good to more perfect,
and the evil to be redeemed,—and where every stream that flows on to
eternity will bear along with it a fresh burden of joy and beauty. Jesus
the crucified, and Jesus the glorified, of simple but holy humanity, is
the great interpreter of the past and the future, and by him
interpreted, how glorious are the words, all our memories on earth and
our hopes in heaven.

------------------------------------

APPENDIX.

I think it right to state here that one or two passages are printed in
the lecture, which, as time was failing, I passed over in the delivery.
They affect in nowise the general import or argument. I thought it
possible that one sentence in reference to Mr. Jones’s lecture would
require to be expunged; but having now read the lecture in print, I see
the sentence may stand. Mr. Jones defined with clearness and accuracy
his belief in Christ’s humanity—that Christ was really a man, “that he
had a corporeal and mental existence like our own,” “that he possessed a
body of flesh and blood, such as is common to our race,” “that in that
body dwelt a rational soul, to whose volitions it was subject,” “that he
was conceived in the womb, and born a helpless infant, and dependent on
the care of his parents through the whole of his childhood and
youth.”[158] Here, then, we have a set of qualities in the man Christ
Jesus, which from their very nature must have commenced with his earthly
life. Thus defined, the lecturer afterwards goes on to say that “though
there was nothing in his corporeal or mental powers essentially
different from other men, yet were _there certain peculiarities_
connected with his _perfect manhood_, which it is of momentous
consequence that we should know and believe.”[159] “First, he possessed
_moral perfection_.” On this all Unitarians are agreed. Secondly, the
lecturer noticed the _miraculous conception_. On this we have
differences amongst us. Now _a third_ peculiarity was also marked, which
by the order of the lecturer’s argument we are entitled to rank with the
others as belonging to the manhood of Christ. Mr. Jones is still
speaking of _the man_ Christ Jesus, and yet the _third peculiarity_ is
alleged to be _his pre-existence_. But if to have been born of a woman,
if to have had a corporeal and mental existence like our own, were
essentials of his humanity, then this is a flat contradiction; if this
attribute were meant to apply to him as God, we should have been told
so; and even then, the distinction would be wholly powerless, for no one
thinks of comparing other men with Jesus as God. Mr. Jones does not
introduce that portion of his subject until we have passed over several
pages.[160] The analogy of body and soul in man is incessantly used to
illustrate a two-fold nature in Christ. Nothing can be more fallacious.
It breaks down at every step; for if it be used to signify the possible
union of two different elements in one being, then Christ is not
two-fold but three-fold, there are in his person the divine soul and the
human soul, and in addition to all, the human body. If it be used to
signify the union of two natures in one person, the soul and body are
not two distinct natures, in the sense required, and therefore can
neither illustrate nor prove the dogmatical complexity ascribed to
Christ. Every nature that we know is composite, but it is one thing to
be compounded of various qualities, and another to be a union of
irreconcileable ones. If man had _two_ souls in one body, so perfectly
united as to make a single person, and yet that one should be ignorant
of what the other knew, then we should have an illustration that would
be correct and intelligible. Mr. Jones uses the following illustration,
to shew that we distinguish between the body and the soul when we do not
express the distinction in words. “If we say,” he observes, “that a
neighbour is sick, or in pain, or hungry, or thirsty, or in want, we
mean that his _body_ is sick, or in pain, or hungry, or thirsty, or in
want, and no one for a moment supposes that we refer to his soul. And
if, on the other hand, we say that a man is learned, or ignorant, wise
or unwise, happy or miserable, humble or proud, it is equally obvious
that we refer to the _soul_, and not to the _body_.”[161] No such
distinction is known either in grammar or philosophy, and the laws of
thought as well as those of language equally repudiate it. A man may be
healthy or sick by _means_ of the excellence or defect of his body, but
the assertion is made of the man as a _person_. He may in like manner be
wise or ignorant by _means_ of the excellence or defects of the
faculties of his soul; but again, the assertion is of _the person_. And,
indeed, if we were to speak with severe and metaphysical precision,
every instance which the preacher has adduced should be predicated of
the Soul, for so far as they are sensations, they belong properly to the
soul; and the body is but their medium or instrument. By the laws, then,
both of thought and language, whatever Christ affirms of himself, he
affirms of his _person_, be the elements what they may that enter into
its constitution. But how are we to think of the dogma for which such
hair-splitting distinctions are adduced; distinctions which, had not the
solemnity of the subject forbidden the use of ridicule, might be shown
by all forms of speech to be as incongruous as they are puerile, and as
ridiculous as they are false.

Note on John xii. See page 8.

On the supposition of our Lord’s simple humanity, this chapter exhibits
a most sublime revelation of his nature. On any other hypothesis it
loses all its moral beauty, and leaves us nothing but inconsistency. The
belief of his simple human nature gives a more sacred awe to the
circumstances in which he was placed, explains to us those struggles and
workings of his inmost soul, which were deepening the bitterness of his
hour of travail. We can then appreciate the grandeur with which, in the
spirit of duty, he arose to meet the approaching storm; and we can also
appreciate the tenderness and sensibility with which he shrunk for a
moment from the anguish that awaited him. To say that the godhead
withdrew its support from him is a solution unintelligible in any sense.
For through every moment of his existence he must have been conscious of
his proper Deity, or he was not; if he was, why tremble? if not, then
during that period his godhead was virtually extinguished, and he
remained simply man. But every utterance of his in this profound chapter
is truly human,—breathings of that nature from its inmost recesses,
strong in duty, but struggling with fear and grief.

There is no period of our Lord’s mission in which we see so profound a
solemnity around him. He had come from the quiet and hospitable home of
his friends in Bethany, had made his public and triumphant entry into
Jerusalem, but the awful close and consummation was at hand; he knew
that these hosannahs would scarcely have died on the ear, before their
change into hootings and revilings; and the hands which spread the palm
were ready to drag him to the cross. The next day was big with sorrows
and tortures. The mysteries of death and the grave were to be resolved;
and it is no dishonour to our Lord to suppose such a prospect should
fill his heart with trouble; for the most finely constituted nature is
ever the most sensitive, and those who perceive clearly and vividly,
apprehend circumstances which it never enters into coarser minds to
discern. In proportion as our personal sensations are acute, is the
victory of duty noble that overcomes them, in the same proportion also
is the strength of submission, or the beauty of patience. With these
views, we can well interpret for our consolation and example the
anguished exclamation of Christ,—“Now is my soul troubled, and what
shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause came I
to this hour.”

If Christ were God as well as man, words like these are absolutely
unaccountable; and as we cannot be so profane as to think that Christ
spoke for mere effect, we have only to conclude that it was the fervent
and simple exclamation of a being who felt he needed help from Heaven.
This were impiety of the darkest die, if Jesus in one portion of his own
person was infinite and omnipotent.

NOTE 1, see page 18.

“Priestley, loaded with glory, was modest enough to be astonished at his
good fortune, and at the multitude of beautiful facts which nature
seemed to reveal to him alone. He forgot that her favours were not
gratuitous, and that if she had so well explained herself, it was
because he had known how to constrain her by his indefatigable
perseverance in questioning her, and by a thousand ingenious means of
wresting from her her answers. Others carefully conceal what they owe to
accident. Priestley seemed to wish to ascribe to it all his merit. He
records, with unexampled candour, how many times he had profited by it
without knowing it, how many times he was in possession of new
substances without having perceived them; and he never concealed the
erroneous views which sometimes directed his efforts, and which he
renounced only from experience. These confessions did honour to his
modesty, without disarming jealousy. Those whose views and methods had
never led them to discovery, called him a mere maker of experiments,
without method, and without an object:—“It is not astonishing,” they
added, “that among so many trials and combinations he should find some
that were successful. But real natural Philosophers were not duped by
these selfish criticisms.”—After some remarks on Priestley’s changes in
religious opinions, and tracing rapidly his progress from fiercest
Calvinism to simple humanitarianism, he thus beautifully describes the
close of his laborious life:—“His last moments were full of those
feelings of piety which animated his whole life, and the improper
controul of which had been the foundation of all his errors. He caused
the gospel to be read to him, and thanked God for having allowed him to
lead an useful life, and granted him a peaceful death. Among the list of
the principal blessings, he ranked that of having personally known
almost all his contemporaries. ‘I am going to sleep as you do,’ said he
to his grand-children, who were brought to him, ‘but we shall wake again
together, and, I hope, to eternal happiness;’ thus evincing in what
belief he died. These were his last words. Such was the end of that man,
whom his enemies accused of wishing to overthrow all morality and
religion, and yet whose greatest error was to mistake his vocation, and
to attach too much importance to his individual sentiments in matters
when the most important of all feelings ought to be the love of
peace.”[162]

The Edinburgh Review,[163] from which this extract is taken, introduces
it with the following liberal and generous remarks:—

“We cannot pass unnoticed the _Eloge_ of Dr. Priestley, which brought
his biographer into the field of theological discussion, and which
deserves to be studied in a country where the Character of that
extraordinary man, both as a Philosopher and a Christian, has been so
greatly misrepresented.”

The conclusion of the following extract is earnestly recommended to the
consideration of those pious men who have been misled by the intolerant
spirit of the day; and who, on lending their aid, without being
conscious of what they are doing, to break the cords of affection which
ought to unite the professors of our common Christianity.

NOTE 2, see page 26.

A great mass of the religious world, in the orthodox meaning of that
phrase, is now called _evangelical_, and although that term, I admit,
does not necessarily imply absolute Calvinism, yet, in point of fact,
the greater number of those whom it designates are Calvinists. The
opponents of Calvinism are often accused of misrepresenting it. For this
reason I have endeavoured here to make it speak for itself—by some of
its principal formularies, by one or two of its popular writers, and by
the author of it himself, in his own words,—Many will say _they_ hold no
such sentiments: for the sake of human nature I sincerely believe them;
if I thought such a faith (the terms being understood) could be
extensively entertained, confidence in my species would be turned into
fear. But, notwithstanding, many opinions which they do hold, logically
pursued, lead directly to the conclusions contained in the extracts, the
writers of which were perfectly consistent with their system. Numbers
who are called Calvinists, I am aware, not only do not believe its worst
doctrines, but do not understand them. In the statement, however, of
opinions, we cannot be guided by individual feelings, except in cases
where we have individual protest to the contrary. The members of the
Church of England may object to the Westminster confession of Faith, not
being a formulary of their Church: it is, however, the sworn authority
of a large body of clergy with whom, when purpose needs, they refuse not
to hold friendly communion. It is, however, an accurate digest of
Calvinism: in that relation I have used it,—to such of the English
clergy as are not Calvinists it can have no reference. I wish to quote
it as a theological, and not as an ecclesical authority. But the
seventeenth article of the English Church, though softened in
expression, is the same in sense. Burnet I know has made the
unsuccessful effort to suit it to both sides for the sake of tender
consciences; but that must be a most convenient and comprehensive
latitude of phraseology which can sound all the notes of the theological
scale, from high Calvinism down to low Arminianism. That the meaning of
the article is properly Calvinistic, is plain from the times in which it
was composed, from the opinions of the men who drew it up, and from the
terms in which it is expressed. Yet many thousand ministers with all
varieties and shades of opinions, solemnly affirm they believe it,
although the law demands that the articles shall be taken in their plain
and grammatical sense. This is one proof of the consistency of creeds. I
quote one author, Boston, who seems actually to feast and luxuriate
amidst the dark monstrocities which he pictures; his spirit appears to
bound, and his heart to exult within him, at the sound of the dreadful
trumpet which calls the wicked to their final doom; and one can almost
imagine the rapture of his eye, as in fancy he saw the flame kindling,
and the smoke of torment arising in which they were to burn for ever. In
his description of hell he displays no ordinary degree of graphic and
geographical talent, and when he comes to paint the sufferings of damned
bodies, he is so accurate and anatomical, that as Paley at 60 learned
anatomy, to write on natural theology, you would suppose that Boston
learned it to enlarge with correctness on the physical tortures of the
lost. I wish not to fix his opinions upon any man or body of men;
substantially, however, they are no more than Calvinism, though some
might object to his mode of expressing them. This I may fairly say to
any of those who do not agree with Boston in their Calvinism, and would
yet fix the Improved Version on us, that _they_ are as bound to receive
the one as _we_ the other. Nay, more so, inasmuch as Boston’s work is in
a wider circulation, and with the evidence of most extensive approval.
It is published by the London Tract Society, and I have an edition
before me as late as 1838; it is sold by every evangelical bookseller,
and it is to be found on the shelves of every evangelical circulating
library. We are accused of rebellion against God and Christ; but let any
one read dispassionately the extracts contained in this, and reflect on
the sentiments to be deduced from their collective testimony, and then
let him say whether deeper injury was ever done to God, or Christ, or
man, than is inflicted by these repulsive dogmas. By these descriptions,
if God is a being of love or justice, then language has no meaning, or
we are to interpret the terms by their contradictories. If you were only
to disguise the words, but preserve the sentiments, and attribute the
character implied in them to the parent of the most zealous of
Calvinists, he would spurn the aspersion with honest indignation. And,
if we mean not by goodness in God, something analogous to goodness in
man, what is it that we can mean? The abstractions in which these dogmas
are involved by scholastic mysticism, blinds the mind to their ordinary
import. But let us suppose an illustration. Take the case of a human
father, who, granting he had the power, should pre-ordain his child to
misery; should attribute a guilt to him, he never knew; should require
from him what he had no power to accomplish, and condemn him because he
had not fulfilled it; should place him in circumstances in which he was
sure to grow worse, and yet withhold the help that could make him
better; should, as the son sunk deeper in iniquity, heap heavier
malediction on the wretch he abandoned; should see without pity the ruin
that continually grew darker, and gaze ruthlessly on the suffering that
was finally to be consummated in despair.—Suppose further, and you
render the picture complete, that such conduct was defined as the
vindication of parental dignity, the very glory of justice; and he who
practised it as a father of exceeding love. But we will go further, and
suppose this father has the power to cast his child into misery
everlasting, and that he does it; must we close the analogy here? No: we
can carry it one step higher: swell out this being into infinite
existence, make him omnipotent and omniscient, place him on the throne
of the universe, and put all creatures within his boundless control, he
is then the God of Calvin’s theology. This view I give not rashly, nor
without foundation; it is more than justified by the quotations that I
bring forward. _Our_ faith is characterized as a blasphemous heresy: we
employ no epithet, but we are not afraid to have it contrasted with
Calvinistic orthodoxy.

_Character of God._

“Predestination is the everlasting purpose of God; whereby (before the
foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his
counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he
hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them to everlasting
salvation, as vessels made to honour.”—_From the 17th Article of the
Church of England._

“By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and
angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others fore-ordained
to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestined and
fore-ordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their
number is so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or
diminished.”

“The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable
counsel of his own will; whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he
pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to
pass by and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sin, to the
praise of his glorious justice.”

“As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God, as a righteous judge, for
former sins doth blind and harden, from them he not only withholdeth his
grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings,
and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes also withdraweth the
gifts which they had, and exposeth them to such objects as their
conception makes occasion of sin; and withal, gives them over to their
own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan; whereby
it cometh to pass, that they harden themselves, even under those means
which God useth for the softening of others.”—_Westminster Confession of
Faith_, ch. iii, § 3, 4, 7; ch. v, § 6.

“God, in his providence, permitted some angels wilfully and
irrecoverably to fall into sin and damnation, limiting and ordering that
and all their sins to his own glory; and established the rest in
holiness and happiness, employing them all, at his pleasure, in the
administrations of his power, wisdom, and justice.”—_Larger Catechism_,
q. 19.

“I grant, indeed,” says Calvin, “that all the children of Adam fell, by
the _will_ of God, into that misery of state whereby they be now bound;
and this is it that I said at the beginning, that at length we must
alway return to the determination of the will of God, the cause whereof
is hidden in himself. The angels which stood fast in their uprightness,
Paul calleth the elect. If their steadfastness was grounded on the good
pleasure of God, the falling away of the others proveth that they were
forsaken; of which thing there can be no other cause alleged than
reprobation, which is hidden in the secret counsel of God.”—_Inst._
note, b. iii, ch. 23, § 4.

“Predestination, whereby God adopteth some into the hope of life, and
adjudgeth some to eternal death, no man, that would be accounted godly,
dare deny.” “Predestination we call the eternal decree of God: he had it
determined with himself what he willed to become of every man. For all
are not created to like estate; but to some eternal life, and to some
eternal damnation, is fore-appointed. Therefore every man is created to
one or the other end. So we say he is predestinated to life or to
death.”—_Ibid._ b. iii, ch. 21, § 5.

“The Scripture crieth out that all men were in the person of one man
made bound to eternal death. Since this cannot be imputed to nature, it
is plain it proceeded from the wondrous counsel of God. But it is too
much absurdity that these, the good patrons of the righteousness of God,
do so stumble at a straw and leap over beams. Again I ask, how came it
that the fall of Adam did wrap up in eternal death so many nations, with
their children, being infants, without remedy, but because it so pleased
God? Here their tongues, which are otherwise so prattling, must be dumb.
It is a terrible decree, I grant; yet no man shall be able to deny but
that God foreknew what end man should have ere he created him, and
therefore foreknew because he had so ordained by his decree.”—_Ibid._ b.
iii, ch. 23, § 7.

These quotations, did space permit, or the patience of my readers, might
be multiplied to a much greater extent; and might do something, perhaps,
to illustrate the character of the persecutor of Servetus. His actions,
as a man, were not inconsistent with his ideas of God as a theologian.

“Who can fully describe,” asks Boston, “the wrath of an angry God? None
can do it.” “Wrath,” he says, “is a fire in the affections of man,
tormenting the man himself; but there is no perturbation in God. His
wrath does not in the least mar that infinite repose which he hath in
himself.” Then, speaking of man generally, he says, “There is a wrath in
the heart of God against him; there is a wrath in the word of God
against him; there is a wrath in the hand of God against him.” We have
here his statement of wrath in God as an agent; and, through pages of
gloomiest description, he makes man its unsheltered object. “There is a
wrath on his body. It is a piece of accursed clay, which wrath is
sinking into, by virtue of the first covenant. There is a wrath on the
natural man’s enjoyments. Wrath is on all he has: on the bread he eats,
the liquor he drinks, and the clothes he wears.”—_Boston’s Fourfold
State._

_Character and Condition of Man._

“With such bondage of sin then as will is detained, it cannot move
itself to goodness, much less apply itself.”—_Calvin Inst._, b. ii, ch.
3, § 5, London Edition, 634.

“Works done by unregenerate men, although for the matter of them they
may be things which God commands, and of good use both to themselves and
others, yet because they proceed not from a heart purified by faith, nor
are done in a right manner, according to the word, nor to a right end,
the glory of God, they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or
make a man meet to receive grace from God: and yet their neglect of them
is more sinful and displeasing unto God.”—_Westminster Confession of
Faith_, ch. xvi. § 7.

“Man in his depraved state is under an utter inability to do anything
truly good.”—_Boston._

The same doctrine is taught more leniently in the 13th article of the
Church of England, so that amongst the theologians, “the natural man,”
as they call him, is in a sad condition, for act as he will he cannot
but sin: if he does good works, he commits sin, and if he neglects them
he is guilty of still greater sins. Quotations in the spirit of those
already adduced might be swelled into volumes from the vast treasures of
Calvinistic divinity. But I shall close these by an extract from the
author I have before mentioned and quoted from, an author, as I have
said, highly popular and largely circulated; and here is a passage of
his on Christ and the last judgment.—“The judge will pronounce the
sentence of damnation on the ungodly multitude. Then shall he say also
to them on the left hand, ‘Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting
fire prepared for the devil and his angels:’ ... The Lamb of God shall
roar as a lion against them; he shall excommunicate and cast them out of
his presence for ever, by a sentence from the throne, saying, ‘Depart
from me, ye cursed.’ He shall adjudge them to everlasting fire, and to
the society of devils for evermore. And this sentence also we suppose,
will be pronounced with an audible voice by the man Christ. And all the
saints shall cry, ‘Hallelujah! true and righteous are his judgments!’
None were so compassionate as the saints when on earth, during the time
of God’s patience: but now that time is at an end; their compassion for
the ungodly is swallowed up in joy in the Mediator’s glory, and his
executing of just judgment, by which his enemies are made his footstool.
Though when on earth the righteous man wept in secret places for their
pride, and because they would not hear, yet he shall rejoice when he
seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked
(Ps. lviii. 10). No pity shall then be shown them from their nearest
relations. The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the judge in the
condemnation of her ungodly husband: the godly husband shall say _Amen_
to the condemnation of _her_ who lay in his bosom; the godly parent
shall say _Hallelujah_ at the passing of the sentence against their
ungodly child; and the godly child shall, from the bottom of his heart,
approve the condemnation of his wicked parents,—the father who begat
him, and the mother who bore him. The sentence is just, they are judged
according to their work.”—Rev. xx. 12.

It were surely preferable to labour under the blindest mistakes
concerning the essence of God, or the person of Christ, than be guilty
of believing such atrocious representations as these of their moral
character. The zealous may scout us if they choose, as infidels; but if
Calvinism and Christianity were identical, infidelity would be virtue,
it would be but the righteous rebellion of human nature against creeds,
in vindication of the truth of its own affections, and the rectitude of
its God.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture IV.

Footnote 151:

See Note on John xii.

Footnote 152:

John x. 34-36.

Footnote 153:

Acts xvii. 30, 31.

Footnote 154:

1 Cor. xv. 21, 47.

Footnote 155:

Acts. x.

Footnote 156:

Cuvier. See Note 1.

Footnote 157:

See Note 2.

Footnote 158:

Lect. pp. 219, 220.

Footnote 159:

Lect. p. 222.

Footnote 160:

Lecture, p. 233.

Footnote 161:

Lecture, p. 244.

Footnote 162:

Cuvier’s Eloge on Priestley.

Footnote 163:

No. 126, 1836.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE PROPOSITION

“THAT CHRIST IS GOD,”

PROVED TO BE FALSE FROM THE JEWISH
AND THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES.

---------------------

PREFACE.

The length of the following Discourse rendered it necessary to omit
large portions of it in the delivery; the remainder has undergone no
alteration in preparing the Lecture for the press.

It is one of the duties of the controversialist to drop each subject of
debate so soon as everything materially affecting it has been advanced;
and to seize the time for silence, as promptly as the time for speech.
This consideration would have led me to abstain from any further remarks
respecting the Improved Version, did it not appear that it is considered
disrespectful to pass without notice any argument adduced by our
opponents. In briefly adverting to Mr. Byrth’s strictures on my former
Lecture, contained in the preface to his own, I am more anxious to avert
from myself the imputation of discourtesy to him than to disprove his
charge of “PITIFUL EVASION;” which even the accuser himself, I imagine,
cannot permanently esteem just.

Notwithstanding the criticisms of my respected opponent, I still
maintain that a Subscriber to the British and Foreign Unitarian
Association is no more responsible for the alleged delinquencies of the
Improved Version, than is a Subscriber to the British and Foreign Bible
Society for the known departures from the true standard of the text
which its funds are employed to circulate. Mr. Byrth appears to
enumerate three particulars, in which he thinks that the parallelism
between these two cases fails:

First; “The Authorised Version does not profess to be a _systematic
Interpretation_. It is not, in one word, a _Creed_ and an _Exposition_.
It is only a literal _translation_, without note or comment.” So much
the worse, must we not say? Whatever deception a false text can produce,
is thus wholly concealed and undiscoverable; the counterfeit passes into
circulation, undistinguished from the pure gold of the Divine Word,
bearing on its front the very same image and superscription. Did this
version “_profess_ to be a _systematic Interpretation_,” readers would
be on their guard; but while professing to be “without note or comment,”
it inserts “a note” or gloss (in the case of the Heavenly Witnesses)
into the _text itself_. The doctrinal bearing of this and other
readings, in which Griesbach’s differs from the Received Text, makes the
Authorised Version, _quoad hoc_, a creed, while it disclaims this
character.

Secondly; To constitute the Parallelism, the Bible Society ought to be,
“The Trinitarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,” avowedly
publishing an “Improved Version of the Scriptures,” &c. So long, then,
as Churchmen abstain from proposing “an Improved Version,” and designate
their societies by neutral names, they may be acquitted, “in foro
conscientiæ,” for retaining any corruptions which may happen to exist in
the _un-improved_ Translation. It is easy to conjecture that, on this
principle, it will be long before the Church incurs the needless guilt
of an “Improved Version.” Surely the frank avowal, by the words
“Trinitarian Society,” of a party purpose, would rather abate than
augment the culpability of retaining a Trinitarian gloss; since the
reader would have fair warning that the work was edited under
Theological bias. And one of the most serious charges against “the
Improved Version” was precisely this: that its first edition was without
party badge (the word _Unitarian_ not appearing in the title); so that
it might possibly deceive the unwary.

Thirdly; The parallelism is said to fail _in extent_; the peculiarities
of the Improved Version being much more numerous, and sustained by less
evidence, than the false readings of the Authorized Translation. I
cannot concur in this remark, so far as it affects the evidence against
1 John v. 7. But I pass by this matter of opinion, to protest against
the unjust exaggeration of a matter of fact, contained in Mr. Byrth’s
supposition of a Trinitarian counterpart to the Improved Version. He
speaks of “a text corrected on the principle of” “_Theological_
criticism and conjecture:”—he knows that _not one text_ is so corrected;
that Griesbach’s second edition is followed without variation; that any
proposed deviations from it are only typographically indicated, or
suggested and defended in the notes. He speaks of the retention of
“questionable passages,” without “notice that their authenticity had
ever been doubted;” and the expunging of as many perplexing doctrinal
texts as possible:—he knows that _not one word_ of the most approved
text is expunged, or of any less perfect text retained; and that notice
is given of every deviation on the part of the Editors, in questions
either of authenticity or of translation, from their standards,
Griesbach and Newcome, and from the Received Text. Mr. Byrth is aware
that his opponents in this controversy do not altogether admire the
Improved Version; but it is not fit that advantage should be taken of
this to publish extravagant descriptions of it, in which the accuracy of
the scholar, and even the justice of the Christian, are for the moment
lost in the vehemence of the partisan.

It is desirable to add, that the Society which originally published the
Improved Version, has long since been merged in the British and Foreign
Unitarian Association. In this larger body three other societies (of
which one, at least, surpassed in scale and influence the unfortunate
object of our opponent’s hostility) are consolidated; and its
subscription list contains the names of those who previously supported
_any_ of the constituent elements of the Association. Hence it can, with
no propriety, be called “The Society instituted for the circulation” of
the Improved Version. It cannot be alleged that a subscriber is bound to
anything more than a general and preponderant approbation of the complex
objects of the Association; nor does he, by retaining his name on the
list of its supporters, forego his right of dissenting from particular
modes of action which its Directors may adopt.

May I assure Mr. Byrth, that I did not intend to insinuate, that his
strictures were produced “second-hand:” except in the sense that many of
them had, in fact, been anticipated. I expressly guarded myself against
any construction reflecting on the originality and literary honour of
our opponents.

The remaining animadversions of Mr Byrth, involving no public interest,
and having merely personal reference to myself, I willingly pass by;
knowing that they can have no power but in their truth; and in that case
I should be sorry to weaken them.

---------------------

LECTURE V.

THE PROPOSITION “THAT CHRIST IS GOD,” PROVED
TO BE FALSE FROM THE JEWISH AND THE
CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

“FOR THOUGH THERE BE THAT ARE CALLED GODS, WHETHER IN HEAVEN OR IN
EARTH (AS THERE BE GODS MANY, AND LORDS MANY), BUT TO US THERE IS BUT
ONE GOD, _THE FATHER_, OF WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, AND WE IN HIM; AND ONE
LORD JESUS CHRIST, BY WHOM ARE ALL THINGS, AND WE BY HIM.”—1 _Cor._
viii. 5, 6.

Scarcely had Christ retired from our world, before his influence began
to be felt by mankind in two different ways. He transformed their
_Worship_, and purified their interpretation of _Duty_. They have ever
since adored a holier God, and obeyed a more exalted rule of right.
Looking upward, they have discerned in heaven a Providence more true and
tender than they had believed; looking around, they have seen on earth a
service allotted to their conscience, nobler and more responsible than
they had thought before. Watched from above by an object of infinite
trust and veneration, they have found below a work of life most sacred,
to be performed by obedient wills beneath his sight. Faith has flown to
its rest _there_, and conscience has toiled in its task _here_, with a
tranquil energy never seen in a world not yet evangelized.

To suppose that a set of moral precepts, however wise and authoritative,
could ever have produced, in either of these respects, the effects which
have flowed from Christianity, seems to me altogether unreasonable. Had
Christ done no more than leave in the world a sound code of ethics, his
work would probably have expired in a few centuries, and have been very
imperfect while it endured. A few prudential and dispassionate minds
would have profited by its excellence; but never would it have trained
the affections of childhood, or overawed the energy of guilt, or refined
the rugged heart of ignorance, or consecrated the vigils of grief.

The power of Christ’s religion is not in his precepts, but in his
person; not in the memory of his maxims, but in the image of Himself. He
is his own system; and, apart from him, his teachings do but take their
place with the sublimest efforts of speculation, to be admired and
forgotten with the colloquies of Socrates, and the meditations of Plato.
Himself first, and his lessons afterwards, have the hearts of the people
ever loved: his doctrines, indeed, have been obscured, his sayings
perverted, his commands neglected, the distinctive features of his
instructions obliterated, but he himself has been venerated still; his
unmistakable spirit has corrected the ill-construed letter of the
Gospel; and preserved some unity of life amid the various, and even
opposing developments of Christian civilization.

The person of Christ may be contemplated as an object of religious
reverence, or as an object of moral imitation. He may appear to our
minds as the representative of Deity, or as the model of humanity;
teaching us, in the one case, what we should believe, and trust, and
adore in heaven; in the other, what we should do on earth:—the rule of
faith in the one relation, the rule of life in the other.

Did his office extend only to the latter, were he simply an example to
us, displaying to us merely what manhood ought to be, he might indeed
constitute the centre of our morality; but he would not properly belong
to our religion: he would be the object of affections equal and social,
not devout; he would take a place among things human, not divine; would
be the symbol of visible and definite duties, not of unseen and
everlasting realities. A Christianity which should reduce him to this
relation, would indeed be a step removed above the mere cold preceptive
system, which depresses him into a law-giver; but it would no more be
entitled to the name of a _religion_, than the Ethics of Aristotle, or
the Offices of Cicero.

It is then as the type of God, the human image of the everlasting Mind,
that Christ becomes an object of our _Faith_. Once did a dark and
doubting world cry, like Philip on the evening of Gethsemane, “Show us
the Father, and it sufficeth us:” but now has Christ “been so long with
us” that we, “who have seen him, have seen the Father.” This I conceive
to have been the peculiar office of Jesus; to _show us_, not to _tell
us_, the spirit of that Being who spreads round us in Infinitude, and
leads us through Eternity. The universe had prepared before us the
_scale_ of Deity; Christ has filled it with his own _spirit_; and we
worship now, not the cold intellectual deity of natural religion; not
the distant majesty, the bleak immensity, the mechanical omnipotence,
the immutable stillness, of the speculative Theist’s God: but One far
nearer to our worn and wearied hearts; One whose likeness is seen in
Jesus of Nazareth, and whose portraiture, suffused with the tints of
that soul, is impressed upon creation; One, therefore, who concerns
himself with our humblest humanities, and views our world with a
domestic eye, whose sanctity pierces the guilty mind with repentance,
and then shelters the penitent from rebuke; who hath mercy for the
victims of infirmity, and a recall for the sleepers in the grave. Let
Messiah’s mind pass forth to fill all time and space; and you behold the
Father, to whom we render a loving worship.

In order to fulfil this office of revealing, in his own person, the
character of the Father, Christ possessed and manifested all the _moral_
attributes of Deity. His absolute holiness; his ineffable perceptions of
right; his majestic rebuke of sin; his profound insight into the corrupt
core of worldly and hypocritical natures, and to the central point of
life in the affectionate and genuine soul; his well-proportioned mercies
and disinterested love, fill the whole meaning of the word Divine: God
can have no other, and no more, perfection of character intelligible to
us.

These moral attributes of God, we conceive to have been compressed, in
Christ, within the physical and intellectual limits of humanity; to have
been unfolded and displayed amid the infirmities of a suffering and
tempted nature; and, during the brevity of a mortal life, swiftly
hurried to its close. And this immersion of divine perfection in the
darkness of weakness and sorrow, so far from forfeiting our appreciation
of him, incalculably deepens it. The addition of infinite force,
mechanical or mental, would contribute no new ingredient to our
veneration, since force is not an object of reverence; and it would take
away the wonder and grandeur of his soul, by rendering temptation
impossible, and conflict a pretence. Since God cannot be pious, or
submissive to his own providence, or cast down in doubt of his own
future, or agonized by the insults of his own creatures, such a
combination seems to confuse and destroy all the grounds of veneration,
and to cause the perfection of Christ to pass in unreality away.

To this view, however, of the person of Christ, Trinitarians object as
defective; and proceed to add one other ingredient to the conception,
viz., that he possessed the physical and intellectual attributes of
Deity;—that he is to be esteemed no less eternal, omnipotent and
omnipresent, than the Infinite Father; the actual creator of the visible
universe, of the very world into which he was born and of the mother who
bare him, of the disciples who followed and of the enemies who destroyed
him. These essential properties of Deity by no means, we are assured,
interfered with the completeness of his humanity; so that he had the
body, the soul, the consciousness, of a man; and, in union with these,
the infinite mind of God. But in a question of mere words, in which the
guidance of ideas is altogether lost, I dare not trust myself to my own
language. To disturb the juxtaposition of charmed sounds, is to endanger
orthodoxy; and, in describing the true doctrine, I therefore present you
with a portion of that unexampled congeries of luminous phrases,
commonly called the Athanasian Creed. “The Catholic faith is this: that
we worship One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding
the persons, nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the
Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the
Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one;
the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is
the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost: ... the Father eternal, the Son
eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal; and yet they are not three
eternals, but one eternal.... So the Father is God, the Son is God, and
the Holy Ghost is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God....
So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one
Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And, in this Trinity, none is afore
or after other; none is greater or less than another; but the whole
three persons are co-eternal together and co-equal.”

Of the second of these three persons, the second article of the Church
of England gives the following account:—

“The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of
the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the
Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her
substance; so that two whole and perfect natures,—that is to say, the
Godhead and the Manhood,—were joined together in one Person, never to be
divided; whereof is One Christ, very God and very Man; who truly
suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to
us.”

In opposition to this theory, we maintain the Personal Unity of God, and
the simplicity of nature in Christ. It is my duty at present to submit
these contrasted schemes to the test of Scripture. In order to effect
this, I advance these three positions:

(1.) That if the Athanasian doctrine be found in Scripture, then, on our
opponents’ own principles, Scripture does not contain a revelation from
God.

(2.) That if it be really in the Bible, certain definable traces of it
there may justly be demanded; and, before opening the record, we should
settle what these traces must be.

(3.) That such traces cannot be found in Scripture.

I. “If,” says Bishop Butler, “a supposed revelation contain clear
immoralities or contradictions, either of these would prove it
false.”[164] This principle, generally recognized by competent
reasoners, has been distinctly admitted in the present discussion; and
Dr. Tattershall, in particular, has employed much ingenuity to prove
that the doctrine of the Trinity, containing no absurdity or
contradiction, involves in no danger the authority of the writings
supposed to teach it. But no subtlety can avail to remove the inherent
incredibility of this tenet, which even its believers cannot, without
uneasiness, distinctly and steadily contemplate. Long usage and Church
authority alone prevent men from perceiving that the propositions,
announcing it, are either simple contradictions, or statements empty of
all meaning. The same remark is applicable to the notion of the two
natures in Christ.

Before proceeding to justify this assertion, let me guard myself from
the imputation of rejecting this doctrine _because it is mysterious_; or
of supporting a system which insists on banishing all mysteries from
religion. On any such system I should look with unqualified aversion, as
excluding from faith one of its primary elements; as obliterating the
distinction between logic and devotion, and tending only to produce an
irreverent and narrow-minded dogmatism. “Religion without mystery” is a
combination of terms, than which the Athanasian Creed contains nothing
more contradictory; and the sentiment of which it is the motto, I take
to be a fatal caricature of rationalism, tending to bring all piety into
contempt. Until we touch upon the mysterious, we are not in contact with
religion; nor are any objects reverently regarded by us, except such as,
from their nature or their vastness, are felt to transcend our
comprehension. God, of whose inscrutable immensity creation is but the
superficial film; Christ, the love of whom surpasseth knowledge;
futurity, veiled in awful shadows, yet illumined by a point or two of
light; these, which are slightly known, and greatly unknown, with
something definite, representing a vast indefinite, are the peculiar
objects of trust and veneration. And the station which the soul
occupies, when its devout affections are awakened, is always this: on
the twilight, between immeasurable darkness and refreshing light; on the
confines, between the seen and the unseen; where a little is discerned,
and an infinitude concealed; where a few distinct conceptions stand, in
confessed inadequacy, as symbols of ineffable realities: and we say,
“Lo! these are part of his ways; but the thunder of his power, who can
understand?” And if this be true, the sense of what we do not know is as
essential to our religion as the impression of what we do know: the
thought of the boundless, the incomprehensible, must blend in our mind
with the perception of the clear and true; the little knowledge we have
must be clung to, as the margin of an invisible immensity; and all our
positive ideas be regarded as the mere float to show the surface of the
infinite deep.

But mystery, thus represented, offers anything but objects of belief: it
presents nothing to be appreciated by the understanding; but a realm of
possibilities to be explored by a reverential imagination; and a
darkness that may be felt to the centre of the heart. Being, by its very
nature, the blank and privative space, offered to our contemplation,
nothing affirmative can be derived thence; and to shape into definite
words the things indefinite that dwell there is to forget its character.
We can no more delineate anything within it than an artist, stationed at
midnight on an Alpine precipice can paint the rayless scene beneath him.

There cannot, however, be a greater abuse of words, than to call the
doctrine of the Trinity a mystery; and all the analogies by which it is
attempted to give it this appearance, will instantly vanish on near
inspection. It does not follow, because a mystery is something which we
cannot understand, that everything unintelligible is a mystery; and we
must discriminate between that which is denied admittance to our reason,
from its fulness of ideas, and that which is excluded by its emptiness;
between a verbal puzzle and a symbolical and finite statement of an
infinite truth. If I were to say of a triangle, each of the sides of
this figure has an angle opposite to it, yet are there not three angles
but one angle, I should be unable to shelter myself, under the plea of
mystery, from the charge of bald absurdity; and the reply would be
obviously this: ‘Never was anything less mysterious put into words; all
your terms are precise and sharp, of definable meaning, and suggestive
of nothing beyond: the difficulty is, not in understanding your
propositions separately, but in reconciling them together; and this
difficulty is so palpable, that either you have affirmed a direct
contradiction, or you are playing tricks with words, and using them in a
way which, being unknown to me, turns them into mere nonsense.’ If to
this I should answer, that the contradiction was only apparent, for that
the _three_ and the _one_ were affirmed _in different senses_; and that
it would be very unfair to expect, in so deep a mystery, the word
_angle_ to be restrained to its usual signification; I should no doubt
be called upon to explain _in what novel sense_ this familiar term was
here employed, since, in the interval between the expulsion of the old
meaning and the introduction of the new, it is mere worthless vacancy.
And if, then, I should confess that the strange meaning was some
inscrutable and superhuman idea, which it would be impossible to reach,
and presumption to conjecture, I should not be surprised to hear the
following rejoinder; ‘you are talking of human language as if it were
something more than an implement of human thought, and were like the
works of nature, full of unfathomable wonders and unsuspected relations;
_hidden properties of things_ there doubtless are, but _occult meanings
of words_ there cannot be. Words are simply the signs of ideas, the
media of exchange, invented to carry on the commerce of minds,—the
counters, either stamped with thought, or worthless counterfeits. Nay
more, in this monetary system of the intellectual world, there are no
coins of precious metal that retain an intrinsic value of their own,
when the image and superscription imprinted by the royalty of
intelligence are gone; but mere paper-currency, whose whole value is
conventional, and dependent on the mental credit of those who issue it:
and to urge propositions on my acceptance, with the assurance that they
have some invisible and mystic force, is as direct a cheat, as to pay me
a debt with a bill palpably marked as of trivial value, but, in the
illegible types of your imagination, printed to be worth the wealth of
Crœsus.’

“Verbal mysteries,” then, cannot exist, and the phrase is but a fine
name for a contradiction or a riddle. The metaphysics which are invoked
to palliate their absurdity, are fundamentally fallacious; and equally
vain is it to attempt to press natural science into the service of
defence. In the case of a Theological mystery, we are asked to assent to
two ideas, the one of which _excludes the other_; in the case of a
natural mystery, we assent to two ideas, one of which _does not imply
the other_. In the one case, conceptions which destroy each other are
forced into conjunction; in the other, conceptions which had never
suggested each other, are found to be related. When, for example, we say
that the union, in our own constitution, of body and mind is perfectly
mysterious, what do we really mean? Simply, that in the properties of
body there is nothing which would lead us, antecedently, to expect any
combination with the properties of mind; that we might have entertained
for ever the notions of solidity, extension, colour, organization,
without the remotest suspicion of such things as sensation, thought,
volition, affection, being associated with them. The relation is
unanticipated and surprising; for thought does not imply solidity: but
then neither does it exclude it; the two notions stand altogether apart,
nor does the one comprise any element inconsistent with the other. It is
evident that it is far otherwise with the union of the two natures in
Christ; the properties of the Divine nature, omnipotence, omniscience,
omnipresence, directly exclude the properties of the human
nature,—weakness, fallibility, local movement and position; to affirm
the one is the _only method we have_ of denying the other; and to say of
any Being, that besides having the omniscience of God, he had the
partial knowledge of man, is to say that _in addition_ to having _all_
ideas, he possessed _some_ ideas. All the natural analogies at which
theologians hint in self-justification, fail in the same point. They
tell me truly that it is a mystery to me how the grass grows. But by
this is meant only, that from the causes which produce this phenomenon,
I could not have antecendently predicted it; that if I had been a fresh
comer on the globe, the meteorological conditions of the earth in spring
might have been perceived by me without my suspecting, as a sequence,
the development of a green substance from the soil. We have again an
example of an unforeseen relation; but between the members of that
relation there is not even a seeming contradiction. Nor do I know of any
other signification of the word mystery, as applied to our knowledge or
belief, except in its usage to express magnitudes too great to be filled
by our imaginations; as when we speak of the mysterious vastness of
space, or duration of time: or, viewing these as the attributes of a
Being, stand in awe of the immensity and eternity of God. But neither in
this case is there any approach to the admission of ideas which exclude
each other; on the contrary, our minds think of a small portion,—take
into consideration a representative sample, of those immeasurable
magnitudes, and necessarily conceive of all that is left behind, as
perfectly similar, and believe the unknown to be an endless repetition
of the known.

It is constantly affirmed that the doctrines of the Trinity, and of the
two natures in Christ, comprise no contradiction; that it is not stated
in the former that there are three Gods, but that God is three in one
sense, and one in another; and in the latter, that Christ is two in one
sense, and one in another.

I repeat and proceed to justify my statement, that if, in the
enunciation of these tenets, language is used with any appreciable
meaning, they are contradictions; and if not, they are senseless. I
enter upon this miserable logomachy with the utmost repugnance; and am
ashamed that in vindication of the simplicity of Christ, we should be
dragged back into the barren conflicts of the schools.

“If,” says Dr. Tattershall, “it had been said that He is ONE GOD and
also THREE GODS, then the statement would have been self-contradictory,
and no evidence could have established the truth of such a
proposition.”[165] Now I take it as admitted that this being is called
ONE GOD; and that there are THREE GODS, is undoubtedly affirmed
_distributively_, though not _collectively_; _each_ of the three persons
being separately announced as God. In the successive instances, which we
are warned to keep distinct, and not confound, of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, _proper Deity_ is affirmed; in three separate cases,
all that is requisite to constitute the proper notion of God, is said to
exist; and this is exactly what is meant, and all that can be meant, by
the statement, that there are three Gods. I submit then that the same
creed teaches that there _are three Gods_, and also that there are _not
three Gods_.

From this contradiction there is but one escape, and that is, by
declaring that the word God is used in different senses; being applied
to the triad in one meaning, and to the persons in another. If this be
alleged, I wait to be informed of the new signification which is to be
attached to this title, hitherto expressive of all the ideas I can form
of intellectual and moral perfection. _More_ than this, which exhausts
all the resources of my thought, it cannot mean; and if it is to mean
_less_, then it withholds from Him to whom it is applied something which
I have hitherto esteemed as essential to God. Meanwhile, a word with an
_occult meaning_ is a word with no meaning; and the proposition
containing it is altogether _senseless_.

But the favourite way of propounding this doctrine is the following:
that God is three in one sense, and one in another; Three in Person, but
only One _Individual_, _Subsistence_, or _Being_. The sense, then, if I
understand aright, of the word _Person_, is different from the sense of
the words _Individual, Being, or Subsistence_; and if so, I may ask what
the respective senses are, and wherein they differ from each other. In
reply I am assured, that by _person_ is to be understood “a subject in
which resides” “an entire set or series of those properties which are
understood to constitute personality; viz. the property of _Life_, that
of _Intelligence_, that of _Volition_, and that of _Activity_, or _power
of Action_.”[166] Very well; this is distinct and satisfactory; and now
for the _other sense_, viz. of the words _Individual_, _Being_, and
_Subsistence_. About this an ominous silence is observed; and all
information is withheld respecting the _quite different meaning_ which
these terms contain. Now I say, that their signification is the _very
same_ with that of the word Person, as above defined; that when you have
enumerated to me a complete “set of personal attributes,” you have
called up the idea of an _Individual_, _Being_, or _Subsistence_; and
that when you have mentioned to me these phrases, you have made me think
of a complete set of personal attributes; that if you introduce me to
two or three series of personal attributes, you force me to conceive of
two or three beings; that a complete set of properties makes up an
entire subsistence, and that an entire subsistence contains nothing else
than its aggregate of properties. To take, for example, from Dr.
Tattershall’s list of qualities which are essential to personality; tell
me of two _lives_, and I cannot but think of two individuals; of two
_intelligences_, and I am necessitated to conceive of two intelligent
beings; of two _wills_ or powers of action, and it is impossible to
restrain me from the idea of two Agents; and if each of these lives,
intelligences, and volitions, be divine, of two Gods. The word
substance, in fact, will _hold no more_ than the word person; and to the
_mind_, though not to the ear, the announcement in question really is,
that there are three persons, and yet only one person. Thus men “slide
insensibly,” to use the words of Archbishop Whately, “into the
unthought-of, but, I fear, not uncommon, error of Tritheism; from which
they think themselves the more secure, because they always maintain the
Unity of the Deity; though they gradually come to understand that Unity
in a merely _figurative_ sense; viz. as a Unity of substance,—a Unity of
purpose, concert of action, &c.; just as any one commonly says, ‘My
friend such-an-one and myself are one;’ meaning that they pursue the
same designs with entire mutual confidence, and perfect co-operation,
and have that exact agreement in opinions, views, tastes, &c., which is
often denoted by the expression _one mind_.”[167]

No doubt this excellent writer is correct in his impression, that the
belief in three Gods is prevalent in this country, and kept alive by the
creeds of his own church. And how does he avoid this consequence
himself? By understanding the word Persons, not in Dr. Tattershall’s,
which is the ordinary English sense, but in the Latin signification, to
denote the _relations_, or _capacities_, or _characters_, which an
individual may sustain, the _several parts_ which he may perform; so
that the doctrine of the Trinity amounts only to this, that the One
Infinite Deity bears three relations to us. This is plain Unitarianism,
veiled behind the thinnest disguise of speech. Between this and
Tritheism, it is vain to seek for any third estate.[168]

The contradiction involved in the doctrine of the two natures of Christ
is of precisely the same nature and extent. We are assured that he had a
perfect human constitution, consisting of the growing body and
progressing mind of a man; and also a proper divine personality,
comprising all the attributes of God. Now, during this conjunction,
either the human mind within him was, or it was not, _conscious_ of the
co-existence and operation of the divine. If it was not, if the earthly
and celestial intelligence dwelt together in the same body without
mutual recognition, like two persons enclosed in the same dark chamber,
in ignorance of each other, then were there two distinct beings, whom it
is a mockery to call “one Christ;” the humanity of our Lord was
unaffected by his Deity, and in all respects the same as if disjoined
from it; and his person was but a movable sign, indicating the place and
presence of a God, who was as much foreign to him as to any other human
being. If the human nature had a joint consciousness with the divine,
then nothing can be affirmed of his humanity separately; and from his
sorrows, his doubts, his prayers, his temptations, his death, every
trace of reality vanish away. If he were conscious, _in any sense_, of
omnipotence, nothing but duplicity could make him say, “of mine own self
I can do nothing;” if of omniscience, it was mere deception to affirm
that he was ignorant of the time of his second advent; if of his
equality with the Father, it was a quibble to say, “my Father is greater
than I.” I reject this hypothesis with unmitigated abhorrence, as
involving in utter ruin the character of the most perfect of created
beings.

The intrinsic incredibility then of these doctrines, involving, as they
do, “clear immoralities and self contradictions,” would throw discredit
on the claims of any work professing to reveal them on the authority of
God. And whether we listen to the demands of Scripture on our
reverential attention, must depend on this:—whether these tenets are
found there or not. And to this enquiry let us now proceed.

One remark I would make in passing, on the supposed value of the theory
of the two natures, as a _key_ to unlock certain difficult passages of
the Bible, and to reconcile their apparent contradictions. Christ, it is
affirmed, is sometimes spoken of as possessing human qualities,
sometimes as possessing divine; on the supposition of his being simply
man, one class of these passages contradicts us; on the assumption of
his being simply God, another. Let us then pronounce him both, and
everything is set right; every part of the document becomes clear and
intelligible.[169]

Now which, let me ask, is the greater difficulty: the obscure language,
which we wish to make consistent, or the prodigious hypothesis, devised
for the reconcilement of its parts? The sole perplexity in these
portions of Scripture consists in this,—that the divine and the human
nature are felt to be incompatible, and not to be predicable of the same
being: if we did not feel this, we should be conscious of no opposition;
and the ingenious device for relieving the bewilderment, is to deny the
incompatibility, and boldly to affirm the union. If you will but believe
_both_ sides of the contradiction, you will find the contradiction
disappear! What would be thought of such a principle of interpretation
applied to similar cases of verbal discrepancy? It is stated, for
example, in the Book of Genesis, that Abraham and Lot received a divine
communication respecting the destruction of Sodom; and the bearers of
the message are spoken of, in one place, as Jehovah himself; in another,
as angels; in a third, as men.[170] What attention would be given to any
interpreter who should say; ‘it is clear that these persons could not be
simply God, for they are called men; nor simply men, for they are called
angels; nor simply angels, for they are called God: they must have had a
triple nature, and been at the same time perfect God, perfect angel, and
perfect man?’ Would such an explanation be felt to solve anything? Or
take one other case, in which Moses is called God with a distinctness
which cannot be equalled in the case of Christ: “Moses called together
all Israel, and said to them: ... I have led you forty years in the
wilderness; your clothes have not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is
not waxen old upon thy foot. Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye
drunk wine or strong drink; that ye might know that _I am the Lord your
God_.”[171] What relief, let me ask, should we obtain from the
difficulty of this passage, by being told that Moses had two natures in
one person, and must be received as God-man? Who would accept “a key”
like this, and not feel that in loosening one difficulty, it locked fast
another, and left us in labyrinthine darkness?

II. When a Trinitarian, and a Unitarian, agree to consult Scripture
together, and to bring their respective systems to this written
standard, it is essential that they should determine beforehand what it
is that they must look for: what internal characters of the books are to
be admitted in evidence; what kind and degree of proof each is entitled
to expect. Each should say to the other before the Bible is opened,
“Tell me now, distinctly, what are the marks and indications in these
records, which you admit would disprove your scheme: what must I succeed
in establishing, in order to convince you that you are mistaken?” The
mutual exchange of some such tests is indispensable to all useful
discussion. I am not aware that any rules of this kind have ever been
laid down, or I would willingly adopt them. Meanwhile I will propose a
few; and state the phenomena which I think a Unitarian has a right to
expect in the Bible, if the Athanasian doctrine[172] be revealed there,
and its reception made a condition of salvation. If the criteria be in
any respect unreasonable, let it be shown _where_ they are erroneous or
unfair. I am not conscious of making any extravagant or immodest
petition for evidence.

If, then, the existence of three Persons, each God, in the One Infinite
Deity,—and the temporary union of the second of these Persons, with a
perfect man, so as to constitute One Christ,—be among the prominent
facts communicated in the written Revelation of the Bible, we may expect
to find there the following characters:

(1.) That somewhere or other, among its thousand pages, these doctrines
so easily and compendiously expressed, will be plainly stated.

(2.) That as it is important not to confound the three persons in the
Godhead, they will be kept distinct, having some _discriminative and not
interchangeable titles_; and, moreover, since each has precisely the
same claim to be called GOD, that word will be assigned to them with
something like an impartial distribution.

(3.) That as, in consistency with the UNITY, the term God will always be
restricted to _one only being or substance_; so, in consistency with the
TRINITY, it will _never_ be limited to ONE PERSON to the exclusion of
the OTHER TWO.

(4.) That when the PERSONS are named by their _distinctive divine
titles_, their equality will be observed, nor any one of them be
represented as subordinate to any other.

(5.) That since the MANHOOD of Christ commenced, and its peculiar
functions ceased, with his _incarnation_, it will never be found
ascribed to him in relation to events, before or after this period.

All these phenomena, I submit, are essential to make scripture
consistent with Athanasianism; and not one of these phenomena does
scripture contain. This it is now my business to show.

III. (1.) Is then our expectation realized, of finding somewhere within
the limits of the Bible, a plain, unequivocal statement of these
doctrines? Confessedly not; and notions which, in one breath, are
pronounced to be indispensable to salvation, are in another admitted to
be no matters of revelation at all, but rather left to be gathered by
human deduction from the sacred writings. “The doctrine of the Trinity,”
says a respectable Calvinistic writer, Mr. Carlile of Dublin, “is rather
_a doctrine of inference and of indirect intimation_, deduced from what
is revealed respecting the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and
intimated in the notices of a plurality of persons in the Godhead, than
a doctrine directly and explicitly declared.” And elsewhere the same
author says, “_A doctrine of inference ought never to be placed on a
footing of equality with a doctrine of direct and explicit
revelation._”[173] If this be so (and the method of successive steps by
which it is attempted, in this very controversy, to establish the
doctrine of the Trinity, proves Mr. Carlile to be right), then to deny
this mere _inference_ is not to deny a _revelation_. But why, we may be
permitted to enquire, this shyness and hesitancy in the scriptures in
communicating such cardinal truths? Whence this reserve in the Holy
Spirit about matters so momentous?[174] What is the source of this
strange contrast between the formularies of the Church of England, and
those of the primitive Church of Christ? The Prayer-book would seem to
have greatly the advantage over the Bible; for it removes all doubts at
once, and makes the essentials most satisfactorily plain; compensating,
shall we say, by “frequent repetitions,” for the defects and ambiguities
of Holy Writ? Nay, it is a singular fact, that in the original languages
of the Old and New Testaments, _no phraseology exists in which it is
possible to express the creeds of the Church_. We give to the most
learned of our opponents the whole vocabulary of the Hebrew and the
Greek Scriptures, and we say, “with these materials translate for us
into either language, or any mixture of both, your own Athanasian
Creed,” They well know, that it cannot be done: and ought not then this
question to be well weighed? if the terms _indispensable_ for the
expression of certain ideas are absent from the Bible, how can the ideas
themselves be present? Scarcely can men _have_ any important notions
without the corresponding words,—which the mind coins as fast as it
feels the need; and most assuredly they cannot _reveal_ them. Let us
hear no more the rash assertion that these tenets may be proved from any
page of scripture; we frankly offer every page, with unrestricted
liberty to rewrite the whole; and we say, with all this, they cannot be
expressed.

(2.) Let us proceed to apply our second criterion, and ascertain whether
the divine persons, whom it is essential to distinguish, _are_ so
distinguished by _characteristic titles_ in scripture; and share among
them, with any approach to equality, the name of GOD.

It is self-evident, that a _verbal revelation_ can make known
_distinctions_ only by _distinctive words_; that if two or more objects
of thought receive interchangeable names, and the term which had seemed
to be appropriated to the one is transferred to the other, those objects
are not discriminated, but confounded. We require, then, separate words
in scripture to denote the following notions; of the One Divine
Substance, or Triune Being; of the First, of the Second, of the Third
person, in this infinite existence;—of the Divine Nature and of the
Human Nature of Christ. For the Trinity, it is acknowledged, there is no
scripture name; unless, indeed, the plural form of the word God in the
Hebrew language is to be claimed for this purpose; and thus an attempt
be still made to confirm our faith by argument which an orthodox
commentator calls “weak and vain, not to say silly and absurd.”[175]
“From the plural sense of the word Elohim,” says the great Calvin, “it
is usual to infer that there are three persons in the Godhead. But as
this proof of so important a point appears to me by no means solid, I
will not insist upon the word. Let me then warn my readers against such
VIOLENT INTERPRETATIONS.”[176] “I must be allowed,” says Dr. Lee, Arabic
Professor in the University of Cambridge, “to object to such methods of
supporting an article of faith, which stands in need of no such
support.”[177] Of the first person in the Trinity, the word “_Father_,”
it is to be presumed, may be considered as the distinctive name; of the
Second person, the terms _Son_, _Son of God_, and _the Word_ or _Logos_;
of the Third person, the phrase _Holy Ghost_, _Spirit_, _Paraclete_; and
of the human nature of Christ, as distinguished from the Second
distinction in the Trinity, the names _Jesus of Nazareth_, _Son of Man_,
the _Man Christ Jesus_. If these names be _not_ distinctive, there
certainly are no others; and if there be none at all, then the
_distinctions themselves_ are not impressed upon the record; they are
altogether destitute of signs and expressions, and must be pronounced
purely imaginary. Meanwhile we will assume the titles, which I have just
enumerated, to be appropriated to the purposes which have been assigned.
To the use of the words _Father_ and _Son_ I shall have particular
occasion to revert.

The usage of the word _God_, in the New Testament, presents us with some
remarkable phenomena. The Athanasian doctrine offers to our belief four
objects of thought, to which this word is equally and indifferently
applicable; the Triune Divine Being; and each of the three Persons; and
its advocates profess to have learned from Scripture the well-adjusted
equipoise of these claims upon the great and sacred name. We are hardly
then prepared by its instructions, distinct and emphatic as they are,
for the following fact; allowing every one of the Trinitarian
interpretations to be correct, the word God is used in the New Testament
TEN times of Christ; and of some other object, upwards of THIRTEEN
HUNDRED times.[178] Whence this astonishing disproportion? _Some
cause_,—something corresponding to it in the minds of the writers, it
must have had; nor is it easy to understand, how an equal disposition of
the Divine Persons in the habitual conceptions of the Authors, could
lead to so unequal an award of the grand expression of Divinity.

Even the few instances, which for the moment I have allowed, will
disappear on a nearer examination. This appears to be the proper place
to pass under review the most remarkable passages, which, under
Trinitarian exposition, _appear_ to sanction the doctrine of the proper
Deity of Christ.

(a.) The evangelist Matthew applies to Christ[179] the following words
of the prophet Isaiah, which, in order to give the truest impression of
the original, I will quote from the translation of Bishop Lowth: “Behold
the Virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son; and she shall call his name
Emmanuel.”[180] As this name is significant, and means “God with us,” it
is argued, that it could not be assigned to any one who was not properly
God.

Now even if this name were really assigned by the prophet to Christ, the
most superficial Hebraist must be aware that it teaches us nothing
respecting the nature and person of our Lord. “The fact is
unquestionable,” says Dr. Pye Smith, “that the gratitude or hope of
individuals, in the ancient scriptural times, was often expressed by the
imposition of significant appellations on persons or other objects, in
the composition of which Divine names and titles were frequently
employed; these are, therefore, nothing but short sentences, declarative
of some blessing possessed or expected.”[181] Thus the name _Lemuel_
means _God with them_; _Elijah_, _God the Lord_; _Elihu_, _God is he_.
So that to use the words of one of the ablest of living Trinitarian
writers, “to maintain that the name Immanuel proves the doctrine in
question is a fallacious argument.”[182]

But, in truth, this name is not given to the Messiah by the prophet; and
the citation of it in this connection by the evangelist is an example of
those loose accommodations, or even misapplications, of passages in the
Old Testament by writers in the New, which the most resolute orthodoxy
is unable to deny; and which (though utterly destructive of the theory
of verbal inspiration) the real dignity of the Gospel in no way requires
us to deny. Turning to the original prophecy, and not neglecting the
context and historical facts which illustrate it, we find that Jerusalem
was threatened with instant destruction by the confederated kings of
Syria and Samaria; that, to the terrified Jewish monarch Ahaz, the
prophet is commissioned to promise the deliverance of his metropolis and
ruin to his enemies; that he even fixes the date of this happy reverse;
and that he does this, not in a direct way, by telling the number of
months or years that shall elapse, but by stating that ere a certain
child, either already born, or about to be born within a year, shall be
old enough to distinguish between good and evil, the foe shall be
overthrown; and that this same child, whose infancy is thus
chronologically used, shall eat the honey of a land peaceful and fertile
once more. Nor is this interpretation any piece of mere heretical
ingenuity. Dr. Pye Smith observes: “It seems to be as clear as words can
make it, that the Son promised was born within a year after the giving
of the prediction; that his being so born at the assigned period, was
the sign or pledge that the political deliverance announced to Ahaz
should certainly take place.”[183] Without assenting to the latter part
of this remark, I quote it simply to show that, in the opinion of this
excellent and learned Divine, the Emmanuel could not have been born
_later_ than a year after the delivery of the prophecy. It will
immediately appear that there is nothing to preclude the supposition of
his being already born, at the very time when it was uttered.

Who this child, and who his mother, really were, are questions wholly
unconnected with the present argument. As the _date_, and not the
_person_, was the chief subject of the Prophet’s declaration, any son of
Jerusalem, arriving at years of discretion within the stated time, would
fulfil the main conditions of the announcement; and as a sign of Divine
deliverance, might receive the name Emmanuel. In fact, however, the
child, in the view of Isaiah, seems to have been no other than the
King’s own son, Hezekiah; and the Virgin Mother to have been, in
conformity with a phraseology familiar to every careful reader of the
Old Testament, the royal and holy city of Jerusalem. Amos, speaking of
the city, says, “The virgin of Israel is fallen,”[184] Jeremiah,
lamenting over its desolation, exclaims, “Let mine eyes run down with
tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of
my people is broken, with a great breach, with a very grievous
blow.”[185] Micah, apostrophizing the citadel, bursts out, “O
tower,”—“stronghold of the daughter of Zion,”—“is there no king in thee?
Is thy counsellor perished? For pangs have taken thee, as a woman in
travail.”[186] The fact that Hezekiah was already born, seems to confirm
rather than to invalidate this interpretation. A living child to his
parents, he was yet the city’s embryo king. What sign more fitted to
reassure the terrified and faithless monarch than this; that, ere his
own first-born should reach the years of judgment, his twofold enemy
should be cast down? What language, indeed, could be more natural
respecting an heir to the throne, of whom great expectations were
excited in grievous times? The royal city dreamt of his promised life
with gladness; he was the child of Jerusalem, in the hour of her anguish
given to her hopes; in after years of peace fulfilling them.[187]

(b.) This prince appears evidently to have been the person described
also in another passage, from which, though never cited in the New
Testament as applicable to Christ at all, modern theologians are
accustomed to infer his Deity. It is as follows: “Unto us a child is
born, unto us a son is given; and his name shall be called wonderful;
counsellor; the mighty God; the everlasting Father; the Prince of
Peace.”[188] We have only to look at the terms in which this great one’s
dominion is described, and the characters that are to mark his reign, in
order to assure ourselves that he is some person very different from
Christ; the Northern district of Palestine is to be delivered by him
from the sufferings of an Assyrian invasion; he is to break the yoke
which Tiglath-Pileser had imposed on the land of Gennesareth; to destroy
the rod of the oppressor; to make a conflagration of the spoils of the
battle-field, and burn the greaves and blood-stained garments of his
country’s enemies.[189] It seems to me impossible to imagine a more
violent distortion of Scripture than the application of this passage to
Christ. But, be it even otherwise, there are only two of these titles
which can be thought of any avail in this argument. One is, the
“everlasting Father;” which if it proves anything, establishes that the
second person in the Trinity is the first person, or else that the word
_Father_ must be given up as a distinctive name, a concession
destructive of the whole doctrine. The other is the phrase, “the mighty
God,” or by inversion, “God the mighty;” on which I presume no stress
would have been laid if, instead of being presented to us in a
translation, it had been given in the original, and called GABRIEL. For
the word _God_, Martin Luther substitutes (Held) _hero_, as the juster
rendering.[190] But, in truth, it is sad trifling thus to crumble Hebrew
names to pieces, in order to yield a few scarce visible atoms of
argument to replenish the precarious pile of church orthodoxy, wasted by
the attrition of reason, the healthful dews of nature, and the sunshine
and the air of God.[191]

(c.) Let us turn to the Proem of St. John’s Gospel; that most venerable
and beautiful of all the delineations which Scripture furnishes, of the
twofold relation of Christ’s spirit, to the Father who gave it its
illumination, and to the brethren who were blessed by its light. To our
cold understandings, indeed, this passage must inevitably be obscure;
for it deals with some of the characteristic conceptions of that lofty
speculative reason, which, blending the refinements of Platonism with
the imaginative license of the oriental schools, assumed in early times
the intellectual empire of the church, and has kept the world ever since
in deliberation on its creations. I do not mean that the Apostle was a
Platonist, or a disciple of any philosophical system. But he wrote in
Asia Minor, where he was surrounded by the _influences_, in constant
familiarity with the _terms_, and accustomed to the _modes of thought_,
peculiar to the sects of speculative religionists most prevalent in his
time. At all events, it is _a fact_ that he uses language nowhere
employed by the other Evangelists or Apostles; and that this language is
the very same which is the common stock, and technical vocabulary of
Philo, the Platonizing Jew, and several Christian writers of the same or
a kindred school. Before, however, endeavouring to suggest the idea
which the Apostle did mean to convey, let me call your attention to that
which he did not.

There cannot be a more misplaced confidence, than that with which the
introductory verses of St. John’s Gospel are appealed to by the holders
of the Athanasian doctrine. Whatever explanation is adopted, which does
not throw contempt upon the composition of the Evangelist, is at all
events subversive of their system: and I do not hesitate to say, that
_this_ is the only thing which I can regard as certain respecting this
passage; that _it never could have been written by an Athanasian_. In
order to test this assertion, it is not necessary to look beyond the
first verse; and before we read it, let us allow the Trinitarian to
choose any sense he pleases of the word God, which is its leading term.
Let us suppose that he accepts it as meaning here “THE FATHER,” and that
the Word or Logos means GOD THE SON. With these substitutions the verse
reads thus:—

In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Father; and the
Son was the Father. This surely is to “confound the persons.”

Let us then suppose the meaning different, and the whole Godhead or
TRINITY to be denoted by the word GOD. The verse would then read thus:—

In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Trinity, and the
Son was the Trinity.

We are no nearer to consistency than before: and it is evident that
before the Trinitarian can find in the passage any distinct enunciation,
the term GOD must be conceived to bear two different meanings in this
short verse,—a verse so symmetrical in its construction as to put the
reader altogether off his guard against such a change. He must read it
thus:—

In the beginning was the second person in the Trinity; and the second
person was with the first; and the second person was possessed of divine
attributes as such.

We might surely ask, without unreasonableness, why, when the _society_
or personal affinity of the Son in the Godhead, is mentioned in the
middle clause, the companionship of the _Father only_ is noticed, and
silence observed respecting the _Holy Spirit_; who at that moment could
not possibly have been absent from the conceptions of any Athanasian
writer. But independently of this, the awkwardness of the construction,
the violence of the leading transition of meaning, render the
interpretation altogether untenable. If it be true, never surely was
there a form of speech worse devised for the conveyance of the intended
ideas.

In order to give the passage its true force, there is no occasion to
assign to the word GOD any but its usual signification; as the name of
the One infinite Person or Being who created and rules the universe. But
it is less easy to embrace and exhibit with any distinctness, the notion
implied in the phrase WORD or LOGOS. The ancient speculative schools,
seeing that the Deity had existed from eternity, and therefore in a long
solitude before the origin of creation, distinguished between his
intrinsic nature,—deep, remote, primeval, unfathomable,[192]—and that
portion of his mind which put itself forth, or expressed itself by
works, so as to come into voluntary and intelligible relations to
men.[193] This section of the Divine Mind, to which was attributable the
authorship of the divine works, they called the LOGOS, or the IMAGE of
God; both terms denoting the _expression_ or _power which outwardly
reveals_ internal qualities; the one taking its metaphor from the _ear_,
through which we make known our sentiments by speech; the other from the
_eye_, to which is addressed the natural language of feature and
lineament. If I might venture on an illustration which may sound
strangely to modern hearers, I should say that the Logos was conceived
of in relation to God, much as with us _Genius_ is, in relation to the
soul of its possessor; to denote that peculiar combination of
intellectual and moral attributes, which produces great, original,
creative works,—works which let you into the spirit and affections, as
well as the understanding, of the Author. Any one who can so possess
himself with the speculative temper of Christian antiquity, as to use
with reverence the phrase _genius of God_, would find it, I am
persuaded, a useful English substitute (though I am well aware, not a
perfect equivalent) for the word Logos. Dwelling within the blank
immensity of God, was this illuminated region of Divine ideas; in which,
as in the fancy and the studio of an artist, the formative conceptions,
the original sketches and designs, the inventive projects of beauty and
good, shaped and perfected themselves; and from which they issued forth,
to imprint themselves upon matter and life, and pass into executed and
visible realities. From the energy of this creative spirit, or blessed
genius of God, two very different orders of results were conceived to
flow:—the forms and symmetrical arrangements of the material universe,
by which, as by the engraving of a seal, Deity stamped his perfections
into _vision_: and the intuitions of pure reason and conscience in the
human soul, by which, as by a heavenly tone or vibration, Deity thrilled
himself into _consciousness_. And when I say _Deity_, I mean the _Logos
of Deity_; for this alone, it was conceived, stood in any relation to
us; the rest was an unexpressed and unfathomable Essence.

This portion of the Divine Infinitude was incessantly and vividly
personified; so as to assume, even in the writings of the Jew and
undoubted Monotheist Philo, the frequent aspect of a second God: though
scarcely have you taken up this idea from one series of passages, before
you are recalled and corrected by others, clearly showing that this is a
false impression, too hastily derived from the intensity of the imagery
and language. Indeed the distinction between a mere personification and
a positive mythological personage is very faint. When a writer
personifies an abstraction, _for the moment_ he conceives of this object
of thought as a person; and were this state of mind perpetuated, he
would _believe_ it to be a person. But his mental attitude changes; and
in a less excited hour, that which had constructed and painted itself
almost into a being, fades away again into an attribute. Hence the
fluctuation of writers, at once imaginative and speculative, like Philo
and some of the early Christian Fathers, between the logical and the
mythical method of speaking of the properties of the Divine nature. And
it may be remarked, that the Apostle John partook, though in a very
slight degree, of the same tendency. He was fond of abstract words:
calling our Saviour the _way_, rather than the _guide_; the _truth_,
rather than the _teacher_; the _light_, rather than the _illuminator_;
and so I conceive, in the commencement of his Gospel, the _inspiration_,
rather than the _inspired_ of God. And then, as if to remedy the
indistinctness of this mode of representation, he resorts to
personification: thus, at the dictation of his reverence, first reducing
the living person to an abstraction; and afterwards, at the bidding of
his imagination, recreating the abstraction into a person. The extent to
which this personification may be carried, by an author who certainly
had no notion but of One personal God, may be estimated from a few
sentences, referring to this very conception of the Logos, from the
Jewish Philo. The invisible and intellectual Logos, he says, is the
image of God, by whom the world was fashioned; his first-born son, his
vicegerent in the government of the world; the mediator between God and
his creatures; the healer of ills; God’s divine Son, whose mother is
wisdom. In another place, the Logos is the very same with the wisdom of
God; the most ancient angel, the first-born of God; to the resemblance
of whom every one, who would be a son of God, must fashion himself. He
is even the “second God,” “To the Archangel, and most ancient Logos,”
says this writer, “God granted this distinguished office, that he should
stand on the confines of creation, and separate between it and its
Creator. With the incorruptible being he is the suppliant for perishable
mortality. He is the ambassador of the Supreme to the subject creation.
He announces the will of the Ruler to his subjects. And he delights in
the office, and boasts of it, saying; I had stood between you and the
Lord as mediator; being neither unbegotten as God, nor begotten as you,
but between the two extremes, and acting as hostage to both,”[194] All
this sounds very mysterious; the important thing to bear in mind is,
that the writer is certainly speaking not of any separate divine person,
but of the impersonated attributes of One Sole Supreme.

St. John then, I conceive, does the very same; only he carefully warns
us against thinking of his personification as otherwise than identical
with the Supreme, by saying outright, that the Logos is God; and
therefore that whatever he may say about the former, is really to be
understood as spoken of the latter. The whole proem divides itself into
two ideas: that from the Genius or Logos of God have proceeded two sets
of divine works; the material world; and the soul and inspiration of
heaven shed upon the world through Christ. His object, I believe, is to
link together these two effects as successive and analogous results,
physical in one case, spiritual in the other, of the same divine and
holy energy. Having warned us, as I have said, in the very first verse,
that this energy is not really a person distinct from the Supreme, he
abandons himself without reserve to the beautiful personification which
follows; assuring us that thereby were all things made at first, and
thereby were all men being enlightened now; that our very world, which
felt that forming hand of old, had not discerned the blessed influence
which again descended to regenerate it: ungrateful treatment! as of one
who came unto his own, and his own received him not. Yet were there some
of more perceptive conscience and better hearts; and they, be they Jew
or Gentile, whose spirits sprung to the divine embrace, were permitted
to become, by reflected similitude, the Sons of God.

Thus far, that is, to the end of the thirteenth verse, there is no
mention of Jesus Christ as an individual; there is only the unembodied
personification of the abstract energy of God in the original design,
and the newer regeneration of the world. Nor should there be any
difficulty in this separation of the Divine Spirit from its positive and
personal results. Of the _Creative_ Mind of God we can easily think, as
not only prior to the act of creation, but still apart from the forms of
matter; and so can we of the _illuminating or regenerative_ Mind of God,
as not only prior to its manifestation in Christ, but apart from its
embodiment in his person. In the next verse, however, the heavenly
personification is dropped upon the man Jesus; the mystic divine light
is permitted to sink into the deeps of his humanity; it vanishes from
separate sight: and there comes before us, and henceforth lives within
our view throughout the Gospel, the Man of Sorrows, the Child of God,
with the tears and infirmities of our mortal nature, and the moral
perfection of the Divine. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the
Father), full of grace and truth.”[195]

(d.) The spirit of this exposition is directly applicable to another
passage, adduced to prove the deity of Christ: “God was manifest in the
flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the
Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”[196] It is
well known that in the most approved text, the word _God_ does not
exist, and the passage reads, “He who was manifest in the flesh,” &c.
Were it permitted to indulge personal wishes in such matters, I could
desire that the common rendering were the true one. I know of no more
exact description of Christ, than that he was a living and human
manifestation of the character of God.[197]

(e.) Let us now turn to the introductory verses of the Epistle to the
Hebrews; a passage which is claimed as the clearest disclosure of the
Deity of Christ; for no discoverable reason, except that from its great
obscurity, it _reveals_ less, perhaps, than any other portion of
Scripture, except the _Revelations_. From the earliest times it has been
justly regarded as exceedingly doubtful whether the Apostle Paul was the
author of this letter; the difficulties and darkness of which are of a
very different character from those which embarrass us in his noble
writings, and arise from mental habits far more artificial and less
healthy than his. But whatever be the authority of this work, and
whatever the doctrine of its introductory portion, it is so far from
giving any support to the Trinitarian sentiments, that it affords, even
in its most exalted language, arguments sufficient to disprove them. The
first verses of the epistle, altered slightly from the common
translation, in order to exhibit more faithfully the meaning of the
original, are as follows:—

“God who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in times past
unto the fathers by the prophets, hath, at the close of these days,
spoken unto us by his Son; whom he hath appointed heir of all things;
through whom also he made the ages of the world; who, being the
brightness of his glory, and the image of his nature, and ruling all
things by the word of his power, having by himself made purification of
our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high; being
become so much greater than the angels, as he hath obtained by
inheritance a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the
angels said he at any time, ‘thou art my son; I have this day begotten
thee?’ And again, ‘I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a
Son.’ And when ever he may again introduce his first-born into the
world, it (_i.e._ the Scripture) saith, ‘let all the angels of God pay
homage to him.’ And with reference to the angels, it saith, ‘who maketh
his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.’ But with
reference to the son, it saith, ‘thy throne, O God! is for ever and
ever, a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom; thou
hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore, O God! thy God
hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.’”

I terminate the quotation here, because I do not believe that the
following words have any relation to Christ. The writer’s argument not
only admits, but requires, that they should be referred to the supreme
God and Father of all.

Now observe with what distinctness the most lofty phrases applied to our
Lord in this passage, affirm his subordination, and deny his equality
with the infinite Father. At the very moment when he is addressed as
God, he is said to have _fellows_, and to be set above them as a reward
for his goodness; in the same breath which declares his throne to be for
ever and ever, he is described as having a God who anoints him with the
oil of gladness. He is greater than the angels, not by nature, but by
the gift of a better inheritance. He is not the original divine
effulgence, but an _emanation_ of that glory, an _image_ of that
perfection; and in constituting the worlds, or rather the great æras of
its appointed history, he is not the designer of its revolutions, but
the instrument of God in effecting them.[198] If this teaches the
supreme Deity of Christ, in what language is it possible to disclaim and
to deny supremacy?

With respect to the peculiar terms of dignity applied in this passage to
Christ, I would observe as follows:—

The words “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” were originally
addressed by a poetical courtier to Solomon or some other Hebrew
monarch, on his accession and marriage;[199] nor can the slightest
reason be assigned for supposing that the ode in which the words occur
had any reference more remote than the immediate occasion of its
composition. The first half of the Psalm[200] is addressed to the
prince; the remainder to his bride,[201] who is exhorted to give her
undivided affection to the new relation which she has formed; to “forget
her own people, and the house of her father;” and who is consoled with
the hope, that “instead of her fathers she shall have her sons, whom she
shall make princes through all the land.” Those who can satisfy
themselves with the theological conceit, that this is a prophetic
allegory, descriptive of the relation between Christ and his Church,
appear to have placed themselves so far beyond the reach of all the
rules of interpretation, that argument becomes fruitless; _no possible
media of refutation exist_. They must belong to the class who have
succeeded in spiritualizing the Song of Solomon; to whom therefore it
has ceased to be a matter of the smallest consequence, _what words_ are
presented to them in Scripture, as they have attained the faculty of
seeing one set of ideas, wherever they look, and an incapacity to see
anything else. Bishop Young, convinced that the prophetic claims of this
Psalm must be relinquished, and that the term _God_ in it is addressed
merely to the Hebrew monarch, and therefore used in an inferior sense,
renders the passage thus; “thy throne O mighty prince, is for ever and
ever.”[202] And surely, even those who can persuade themselves that
scripture can have two intended meanings, and who imagine the poem in
question to have referred primarily to Solomon, and remotely to the
Messiah, must perceive that a word by which the Jewish prince might be
accosted, cannot imply the supreme deity of Christ. Christ is said, in
the common translation, to have made the worlds; but it is generally
admitted that the phrase does not denote the construction of the
material universe, and is even incapable of bearing this meaning. It
describes Jesus as the agent of God in bringing about the successive
states of our social world; in introducing the preluding revolutions,
and the final catastrophe of human affairs. If it be asked, _what ages,
what revolutions_, are thus attributed to the instrumentality of Christ?
the answer must be sought in the fact, that the author was a Hebrew,
writing to Hebrews. He seized on the grand Jewish division of time and
Providence into two portions—the period before, and the period after,
the coming of the Messiah; and these were the two AGES, frequently
called “the present world,” and “the world to come,” which Christ is
said to have constituted. Does any one inquire, in what way our Lord, if
he were not at least pre-existent, could administer the arrangements of
Providence in the former of these periods, that is, before his own
mission to mankind? I submit, in answer, a suggestion which seems to me
essential to the clear understanding of all the Christian records, and
especially of those which relate to the years after the ascension. The
advent of the Messiah was represented, _during those years, not as
past_, but as _still future_;[203] they were regarded as the close of
the old and earthly epoch, not the commencement of the new and heavenly;
so that all that Jesus of Nazareth had already done, the mighty changes
which he had set in operation,—were an action upon the _former_ of the
two great ages; nor _would the latter be introduced till he returned
from heaven_; to rule, for a period vast or even indefinite, as the
personal vicegerent of God over his faithful children here. This event,
which in our own days Millenarians are expecting soon, and which the
early Christians expected sooner, was regarded as the true coming of the
Messiah—the point of demarcation between the ages—the introduction of
“the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.”[204]
Meanwhile the old world was drawing to a close, of which a warning (like
that given to Noah before the flood)[205] had been given by the
preliminary visit, with unmistakable credentials, of him who was to be
the Messiah; he had come in the flesh, and retired in the spirit; and
was leaving time for the tidings of his appointment and his approach to
spread, by the voice of witnesses and preachers who published the
pledges of his power. Of those pledges, which marked him out as the
future prince of life and earth, none were so distinguished as his
resurrection and ascension, by which God had given assurance that he
would one day judge or rule the world in righteousness;[206] by which he
was declared to be the son of God with power;[207] and on the very day
of which he became the first-born or the begotten child of God;[208] and
sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.[209] Invested with
his office, he yet abstained from immediately coming to claim its
prerogatives; he continued sequestered in the heavens, allowing to the
world a time of preparation, a solemn pause before judgment;[210]
repressing the impatient moment of the great revolution, and by his
powerful word, bearing a while and upholding all things as they
are.[211] If this were really the conception of the apostles, it
follows, no doubt, that they prematurely expected the return of their
Lord; but that they did so, is no new assumption; and in adopting it I
protect myself by the authority of Mr. Locke, who says in a note on a
passage of the Epistle to the Romans, “It seems, by these two verses, as
if St. Paul looked upon Christ’s coming as not far off; to which there
are several other occurrent passages in his epistles.”[212]

If the foregoing interpretation of the introduction to this epistle be
true, it follows that all the power and dignity there ascribed to Christ
are described as _acquisition after his ascension_; that not till then
was he accosted with the title of divinity previously applied to
Solomon; not till then did he become greater than the angels, or receive
an anointment of gladness above his fellows; not till then did he
receive his heirship, his filiation, his vicegerency of God. Of his
supreme Deity scarcely could any more emphatic denial be conceived.[213]

(f.) The following passage is sometimes quoted as affirmative of the
Deity of Christ: “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us
an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him
that is true, in (or by) his Son Jesus Christ. _This_ is _the true God_,
and eternal life.”[214] But it is surely evident that with Calvin,
Newcome, Dr. Adam Clarke,[215] we must consider the concluding pair of
epithets as parallel respectively with the two penultimates. “By him
that is true,” says the Apostle, “I mean the true God,” “and this Jesus
Christ is eternal life.”[216] As to the pretence of over-nice
grammarians, that the pronoun “_this_” must refer to Jesus Christ as the
nearest antecedent, the Apostle John himself dismisses it with this one
sentence: “Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. _This_ (not Jesus Christ, it is
to be presumed) is a deceiver and an antichrist.”[217] The antecedent,
in this case, is not only _remote_, but _plural_.

(g.) I know of only one other set of passages requiring explanation from
a Unitarian; and of these I take the following as an example; giving,
you will observe, a translation slightly differing from the authorized
version, but to which no competent judge will probably object:—“Let this
mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form
of God, never thought his equality with God a thing to be eagerly
retained; but divested himself of it, and took on him the form of a
servant, and assumed the likeness of men; and being in the common
condition of man, still humbled himself, and became obedient unto death,
aye, and the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted
him &c.”[218] Elsewhere Paul briefly expresses this sentiment thus:
being rich, for your sakes he became poor.[219]

Now, in order to appreciate the striking beauty of this passage, it is
necessary to remember that the Apostle is writing to _Gentiles_; and to
enter into his remarkable conception respecting the relation of the
Messiah to them. This great object of promise was, according to the
original idea of him, a mere national appropriation of the Jews; made
their own by birth and lineage as well as by office. So long as these
peculiarities belonged to him, _he could not_, without breaking through
all the restraints of the sacred Mosaic law, stand in any friendly
connection with the Gentiles; nor did our Lord, during his mortal life,
ever extend his ministry beyond his native land. Moreover, there was
nothing, Paul conceived, to prevent his realizing at once, had he willed
it, all the splendid anticipations of the Hebrews; nothing to obstruct
his seizing, from the hills of Galilee, or the heights of Jerusalem, the
promised royal sceptre, and making himself, without delay, the Lord of
all below; nothing but his holy resolve to be no mere Jewish Messiah,
and his desire to embrace the Gentiles, too, within the blessings of his
sway. And how could this be accomplished? _Never_, so long as the
personal characteristics of the Israelite attached to him. He determined
then to lay these aside, which could be done by death alone. On the
cross, or in the ascension, he parted from the coil of mortality, in
which were enveloped all the distinctions that made him national rather
than human; the lineage, the blood, the locality, the alliance, passed
away; the immortal spirit alone remained, and departed to the rest of
God; and this his soul was not Hebrew, but was human; and so his
relations expanded, and the princely Son of David became, through death,
the divine Messiah of humanity. Writing then to Gentiles, the Apostle
reminds them of this; tells them of what attainable splendours Jesus had
deprived himself, what rightful glories he had resigned, what anguish he
had endured, to what death he had submitted, in order to drop his mortal
peculiarities which had excluded the nations from the peace of his
dominion, and to assume that spiritual state to which they might stand
related. It was not his Godhead, not the application of his miracles to
his personal advantage, but the dignities of the Prince of Israel, the
prerogatives and triumphs of God’s vicegerent, of which he emptied
himself, and for the Gentiles’ sakes became poor. He whose office made
him as God, became, by his pure will, a servant; he who, without the
slightest strain of his rights, might have assumed an equivalence to
Providence on earth, and administered at once the promised theocracy of
heaven, was in no eager haste to seize the privilege; but, that he might
call in those who else had been the exile and the outcast people,
entered first the shadow of suffering and shame; he who might have been
exempt from death, took the humiliation of the cross; showing a divine
and self-forgetful love, which disregards his own rights to pity others’
privations; and which gave a resistless force to the exhortation, “Look
not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of
others.”[220]

(h.) In direct contrast with this past humiliation of Christ, is the
present glory and future dominion with which, in the verses immediately
following, the Apostle describes him as invested by the rewarding
complacency of God. And here the passage enters the same class with
three others,[221] of which the introduction of the Epistle to the
Hebrews is one, but the most remarkable is the following: “Christ, ...
who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature;
for by him were all things created, that are in Heaven and that are in
earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or
principalities, or powers, all things, were created through him and for
him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he
is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the
first-born from the dead; that in all things he might have pre-eminence;
for it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.”[222]

Calvin himself warns us that “the circumstances of this place require us
to understand it as spoken,” not of the original formation of the
universe, but “of the renovation which is included in the benefit of
Redemption.”[223] Indeed a very superficial acquaintance with the
phraseology of the Apostle, is sufficient to convince us that the
language which we have here is _very unlike_ that in which he speaks of
the construction of the material system of things and _very like_ that
in which he describes the regeneration of the world by the faith of
Christ. Describing the natural creation, he makes no such strange
selection of objects as thrones, principalities, dominions, powers, with
unintelligible avoidance of everything palpable: but says plainly, “The
living God, who made Heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that
are in them.”[224] And characterizing, on the other hand, the effects of
the Gospel, he says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
unto good works;”[225] and “If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature; the old things have passed away, behold all things have become
new.”[226] Nor does the language of this passage appear so violently
figurative as commentators have usually supposed. Apply to it the
Apostle’s conception respecting the return of his Lord from Heaven, to
reign visibly upon earth, over a community holy and immortal, and the
obscurity will no longer be felt. That advent, introducing the future
age or world to come, would be attended by a revolution which could be
called no less than a “new creation.” No term less emphatic would
adequately describe the superseding of all existing arrangements, the
extinction of earthly rule, authority, and power;[227] the recal to
earth of the spirits of the just;[228] the immortalizing of the saints
who had not slept;[229] the gathering together the whole family of the
holy in Heaven or earth;[230] the everlasting destruction of the
faithless from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his
power;[231] the bowing of every knee before the Prince of Life;[232] the
opening of the kingdom that cannot be moved;[233] and the award of
recompense to those who, having suffered, should reign with him.[234]

Already were the elements of this blessed society drawing themselves
together, some in Heaven, others upon earth; the investiture with
immortality had commenced. Christ was the beginning, the first-born from
the dead: and the departed saints sharing his heavenly rest, and ready
for the Lord to bring with him;[235] the afflicted Church below, in
earnest expectation of the manifestation of those Sons of God, and
though waiting for the redemption of the body, yet risen together with
Christ to that spiritual mind which is life and peace;[236] all these
were kept by the power of God unto the salvation, which was ready to be
revealed in the last time.[237] The multitude of the holy was thronging
in, showing that no scant dominion was forming; but that it pleased the
Father that, in his vicegerent, all fulness should dwell, and whatever
is perfect be united. Lifted above the hostile reach of human might and
dominion, above all mean comparison with earthly names of dignity, he
sees all things already beneath his feet in the world as it is, and all
things prospectively submissive in the world as it is to be.[238] Nor
was Jesus, in his retirement above, unoccupied with the glories of his
commission, or indifferent to the recompense of his followers; rather is
he preparing and allotting to the glorified there, and the toiling here,
the privileges and powers of the everlasting age which shall take place
of the thrones and principalities of this. Over both portions of the
community of Saints, the seen and the unseen, the Heavenly and the
earthly, he is the living head, and his spirit filleth all.[239]

This vision of the Advent, with all the magnificent ideas which gathered
round it, seems to me to have given rise to the glorious “rapture” of
this passage; to have thrown in, at first, its light and darkness, and
when applied now to its interpretation, to disclose the dim outline of
its plan. And though, in form, the anticipation itself was at least
premature, in spirit it receives, in the providence of the Gospel, one
prolonged fulfilment; and many of its accompanying conceptions realize
themselves perpetually. Though as yet Christ comes not back to us, yet
do the faithful go to him, and there, not here, are for ever with the
Lord. Though with no visible sway he dwells on earth, he more and more
rules it from afar; wins and blesses the hearts of its people, bends
their wills, sends his image to be their conscience; and long has he had
a might and name among us, far above our principalities and powers, and
made the cross superior to the crown. And who can deny that he hath
united in one the family in heaven and earth, compelled death to fasten
innumerable ties of love between the kindred spheres, and trained our
rejoicing sympathies to see in creation but one society of the good,
whether they toil in service and exile here, or have joined the colony
above of the emancipated sons of God.

What then is the result of our inquiry into the scriptural use of the
word God? That it is once applied, by way of transference, to Christ, in
a passage of whose honours Solomon was the first proprietor. The views
of the writer, and the purpose of his letter, might make this secondary
application of the Hebrew poem right and useful. But now, how miserably
barren must be that religion, how unspeakably poor that appreciation of
Christ, which thinks to glorify him, by throwing around him the cast-off
dignities of a Jewish prince! All these convulsive efforts to lift up
the rank of Jesus, do but turn men from that greatness in him which is
truly divine. And after all they utterly fail—except in turning into
caricature the image of perfect holiness, and into a riddle the
statement of the grandest truths: for the scanty evidence will not bear
the strain that is put upon it. Nothing short of centuries of
indoctrination could empower so small a testimony to sustain so enormous
a scheme, and enable ecclesiastics, by sleight of words, to metamorphose
the simplicity of the Bible into the contradictions of the Athanasian
creed.

Our remaining criteria may be very briefly applied.

(3.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible is this; that as there are
three persons equally entitled to the name of God, that word must never
be _limited_ to One of these, to the exclusion of the other two.

Yet do the Scriptures repeatedly restrict this title to the Father so
positively, that no more emphatic language remains, by which it would be
possible to exclude all other persons from the Godhead. If the texts we
shall adduce of this class _do not_ teach the personal unity of God, let
it be stated what terms _would_ teach it; or whether we are to consider
it as a doctrine incapable of being revealed at all, however true in
itself. Meanwhile, I would ask, whether the most skilful logician could
propose a form of speech, closing the Godhead against all but the
Father, more absolutely than these passages; “There is but One God, the
FATHER.”[240] “FATHER! ... this is life eternal, to know THEE THE ONLY
TRUE GOD, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”[241] “The _true
worshippers_ shall worship THE FATHER in spirit and in truth; the Father
seeketh such to worship him; GOD is a spirit, and they that worship him
must worship him in spirit and in truth.”[242] “There is ONE GOD AND
FATHER OF ALL.”[243]

If such passages as these do not deny the Deity of all persons but One,
it must be because the word “Father” is used in them to denote the whole
Trinity; and if this be so, then this name ceases to be distinctive of
the first person in the Godhead; no discriminative title of that person
remains; it becomes impossible for language to characterize him; and the
whole mechanism of speech, by which alone a verbal revelation could
disclose the distinctions in the divine nature, vanishes away. You must
either confess absence of the distinctions themselves, or show the
presence of distinctive names.

(4.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible would be this; that when
the _persons_ are named, by their distinctive Divine titles, their
equality will be recognized, nor any one of them be represented as
subordinate to another.

If an Athanasian received a divine commission to prepare a Gospel,—a
statement of the essentials of Christianity,—for the use of some
unevangelized nation, he would not, we may presume, habitually represent
the Son, in his very highest offices, as inferior to the Father, as
destitute of independent power, as without underived knowledge, and
possessed only of a secondary and awarded glory. At all events, these
representations would not be made without instant explanation; and the
writer would accuse himself of rashly periling the mysteries of God, if
he committed himself to such statements without guard or qualification,
in broad unlimited propositions. Yet these are precisely the phenomena
of Scripture. It is perpetually maintained by Trinitarians, that the
miracles of Christ were acts of power, inexplicable except by proper
Deity, united with his humanity; and that his superhuman wisdom was an
expression of that Divine Nature which blended itself with his mortal
constitution. If so, his miracles were wrought and his teachings
dictated by that element of his personality which was God,—that is, by
GOD THE SON;[244] but this, our Lord unequivocally denies; “The Son can
do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do;” “I can of mine
own self do nothing.”[245] “The words which I speak unto you, I speak
not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the
works;”[246] “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the
Father;”[247] “The works which the Father hath given me to
perform.”[248] These passages declare, with all the precision of which
language admits, that the wisdom and the might which dwelt in Christ,
were not those of the Son, but those of the Father; the incarnate God
had no concern with them, for they are ascribed exclusively to him who
never became incarnate. Indeed we ask, and we ask in vain, for any one
divine act or inspiration ascribed by our Lord to this humanized Deity
with whom his mortal nature was united: his teachings are one prolonged
declaration that the divinity that dwelleth within him was THE FATHER.
If he felt within him a co-equal Godhead, how could he make the
unqualified affirmation, “My Father is greater than all?”[249] Or can a
more specific disclaimer of Omniscience be framed than this; “Of that
day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels who are in Heaven,
NEITHER THE SON, but the Father?”[250] Dr. Adam Clarke, unable to resist
this overpowering text, expresses his suspicion that it is not
altogether genuine, and that the words, “neither the Son,” should be
expunged. It would appear that the temptations to “mutilation” are felt
by other parties than the Editors of the Improved Version. If it be
said, that in the passages which have been cited, the subordination
alleged of Christ, refers to his human nature, and his mediatorial
office, then it follows that his highest title may become the name of
what is called his lowest capacity; and if this be so, no medium of
verbal proof remains by which to establish any higher nature.[251] But
can any supposition be more monstrous than this; that whenever our Lord
used the familiar language of personality, and discoursed with the
peasants of Galilee, and the populace of Jerusalem, he was perpetually
performing a metaphysical resolution of himself into natures,
characters, and offices, and putting forth, now a phrase from the
divine, now another from the human capacity; here a sentence from the
pre-existent, and there another from the mediatorial compartment of his
individuality? And the absurdity is crowned, when writings, crowded thus
with mental reservations, are handed over to us as a _Revelation_.

(5.) Our last expectation from a Trinitarian Bible is this; that, since
with the incarnation began and ended the peculiar office of Christ’s
humanity, he will not be spoken of as man, in relation to the events
before or after this period.

The glory which our Lord is thought to have possessed before his
entrance into this world, was the essential, underived, inalienable
glory, which belonged to his Divinity; nor was his highest nature yet
blended with the suffering elements, or capable of being described by
the inferior titles, of his mediatorial office, or his mortal existence.
Yet is it under the designation of SON OF MAN that he is described,
according to the prevalent interpretation, as pre-existent; it is the
SON OF MAN who “was before,” in that state, whither he was to “ascend up
again;”[252] it was, “He that came down from Heaven,—even the SON OF
MAN, who is in Heaven.”[253] Whatever doubt there may be respecting the
precise import of this title, it certainly cannot be thought to denote
the separate divine nature of Christ, as it existed before the
incarnation. In perfect consistency with this language, it appears that
for the restoration of this original glory, Jesus declares himself
wholly dependent on the Father; “And now, O Father, glorify me with
thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world
was.”[254] Here, if there be truth in the Trinitarian hypothesis, it was
the man that prayed for a re-bestowal of that which the man never
possessed, and which the God never lost or could receive from another.
It must be admitted that no expression of dependence can be more solemn
and absolute, than that which pours itself forth in prayer; and if our
Lord was able to resume his former state, by the energy of his own
Omnipotence, this act of supplication loses all semblance of sincerity.
Yet, if here his dependence on the Father is acknowledged to be implied,
with what consistency can another passage, relating also to his
departure from earth to Heaven, be seized upon to prove that he _raised
himself_ from the dead, by that _inextinguishable_ and glorious power,
which, nevertheless, he entreats the Father to restore? If his proper
Deity brought back to life the crucified humanity, it was a mockery for
his manhood to concern itself in prayer, for the restoration of the
proper Deity. That his resurrection is not ascribed to inherent power of
his own, is evident, not merely from the habitual language of the
preachers of this great miracle, who declare without reserve that “this
Jesus hath _God raised up_;”[255] nor from the words of Paul, who calls
himself “an Apostle by Jesus Christ and _God the Father, who raised him
from the dead_;”[256] but even from the very text (when read without
curtailment) which is adduced to prove the contrary; “No man taketh it
(my life) from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it again; _this commandment have I
received of my Father_.”[257] “The Messiah is privileged to be immortal;
and my seeming fall by hostile hands will neither disprove my claim to
the office, nor deprive it of this peculiar feature; my mission gives me
a right to live, which will not be forfeited, though I exercise the
right to die. Let no one think that my life is forced from me without
consent of my own will; you can no more take it from me, than you can
restore it to me. It is by the arrangement of the Father, whose will is
also mine, that I take my Messianic immortality, not at once, but
through a process of suffering and death.”

If we pass forward beyond the mortal life, to the final exaltation of
Christ, he is still presented to us undivested of his humanity. Listen
to the modern preachers of Orthodoxy, and they will tell you that the
judicial capacity of the Saviour could be filled by Deity alone; that to
pass judgment on an assembled world, to read the secrets of all hearts,
and allot their final doom, are offices demanding nothing less than
Omniscience, Omnipotence, Independence.[258] But from the Apostle Paul
we learn, that “God will judge the world in righteousness by that MAN
whom he hath ordained;”[259] and our Lord himself says, “I can of mine
own self do nothing; as I hear I judge;”[260] “The Father hath given him
authority to execute judgment also, BECAUSE HE IS THE SON OF MAN.”[261]
Nor is it the presumption of heresy alone that esteems it possible for
God to confer on a human being the requisites for so august an office;
for it is Archbishop Tillotson who says, “We may promise to ourselves a
fair and equal trial at the judgment of the Great Day, because we shall
then be judged by a man like ourselves. Our Saviour and judge himself
hath told us, that for this reason _God hath committed all judgment to
the Son, because he is the Son of man_. And this in human judgments is
accounted a great privilege, to be judged by those who are of the same
rank and condition with ourselves, and who are likely to understand
best, and most carefully to examine and consider all our circumstances,
and to render our case as if it were their own. So equitably doth God
deal with us, that we shall be acquitted or condemned by such a judge
as, according to human measures, we ourselves should have chosen, by one
in our own nature, who was made in all things like unto us, that only
excepted which would have rendered him incapable of being our judge,
because it would have made him a criminal like ourselves. And therefore
the Apostle offers this as a firm ground of assurance to us that God
will judge the world in righteousness, because this judgment shall be
administered by a man like ourselves; He hath, saith he, appointed a day
wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he
hath ordained,” &c.[262]

It is, then, in his humanity, that this high prerogative belongs to
Jesus. Yet are our opponents right in their assertion that, if there be
any office attributed to him, requiring divine perfection, it is this;
no higher exaltation remains, no superior glory is referred to him from
which, with any better reason, we can conclude his equality with the
Father. Human in this, he is human in all things.

Not one then of the proper characteristics of a Trinitarian Bible can be
found in the Scriptures; and it is vain for the Athanasian system to
claim their support. This conclusion can be subverted only in two ways;
either by showing, that the criteria which I have laid down, for
ascertaining the theology of the sacred writings, are unreasonable and
incorrect; or by showing, that the application of them does not yield
any of the results which I have stated. I say _any_ of the results; for
if _all the phenomena_ which I have assumed as tests, would be necessary
to give a Trinitarian complexion to the Scriptures, the absence of even
a portion of them would decide the controversy against our opponents’
scheme, whatever difficulties might remain to embarrass our own. If the
_list of criteria_ be thought materially wrong, let it be shown where
and why; let it be explained how there can be a _verbal revelation_ of
“distinctions,” without any distinctive names; how, without such
discriminative words, we are to know, _unless we assume the whole
doctrine to be proved_, when the human nature of Christ speaks, or is
spoken of, when the divine; how the poor, who first had the gospel
preached to them, ascertained this with the requisite degree of nicety;
and above all, we would request to be furnished with a better set of
criteria; and to be distinctly informed, _what scriptural phenomena
would be required, in order to disprove the Trinitarian scheme_. If, on
the other hand, I have erred in the _application_ of my tests, let it be
shown how far into the substance of the argument the error extends. I
cannot hope that the exposition which I have given will be found free
from mistake and inaccuracy; and let these be exposed with such severity
as they may deserve. Only let it be remembered, that the real question
is not about the skill of the advocate, but respecting the truth of the
scheme; and when all the errors of the one have been cleared away, let
it be still asked, in what condition stands the evidence of the other. I
have purposely taken my principal station on the least favourable ground
of the Unitarian argument; I have exhausted the strongest passages
adduced against our theology: and I have done this the more readily,
because these portions of scripture appear to possess an excellence and
beauty, which are obscured by their unresisted controversial repetition,
and marred by the lacerations of Orthodoxy.

And may we not, without immodesty, ask any candid Trinitarian, are these
passages so very plain and easy, are they so numerous, are our
interpretations so irrational and ignorant, as to justify the imputation
of deceit, of blasphemy, of wilful mutilation of the word of God, which
we are condemned perpetually to hear? As to that excellent man, who on
Wednesday last, treated in this way our most cherished convictions, and
our most innocent actions, I have said nothing in reply to his
accusations; for I well know them to have failed in benevolence, only
from excess of mistaken piety. Had he a little more power of
imagination, to put himself into the feelings and ideas of others,
doubtless he would understand both his Bible and his fellow-disciples
better than he does. Meanwhile, I would not stir, with the breath of
disrespect, one of his grey hairs; or by any severity of expostulation
disturb the peace of an old age, so affectionate and good as his. He and
we must ere long pass to a world, where the film will fall from the eye
of error, and we shall know, even as we are known.[263]

In conclusion, then, I revert with freshened persuasion, to the
statement with which I commenced. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God hath
presented to us simply in his inspired humanity. Him we accept, not
indeed as very God, but as the true image of God, commissioned to show
what no written doctrinal record could declare, the entire moral
perfections of Deity. We accept,—not indeed his body, not the struggles
of his sensitive nature, not the travail of his soul, but his purity,
his tenderness, his absolute devotion to the great idea of right, his
patient and compassionate warfare against misery and guilt, as the most
distinct and beautiful expression of the Divine mind. The peculiar
office of Christ is to supply a new _moral_ image of Providence; and
everything therefore except the _moral_ complexion of his mind, we leave
behind as human and historical merely, and apply to no religious use. I
have already stated in what way nature and the gospel combine to bring
before us the great object of our trust and worship. The universe gives
us the scale of God, and Christ his Spirit. We climb to the Infinitude
of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of
worlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of light. We
dive into his Eternity, through the ocean waves of Time, that roll and
solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed
things upon our present globe. The scope of his Intellect, and the
majesty of his Rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting
silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the Spirit
that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Nazareth; the
thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with
fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One that passed no
sorrow by. The government of this world, its mysterious allotments of
good and ill, its successions of birth and death, its hopes of progress
and of peace, each life of individual or nation, is under the
administration of One, of whose rectitude and benevolence, whose
sympathy with all the holiest aspirations of our virtue and our love,
Christ is the appointed emblem. A faith that spreads around and within
the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the light of every pure
affection, and presses with Omnipotent power on the conscience; and our
only prayer is, that we may walk as children of such light.

---------------------

NOTES.

---------------------

_On Impossibility, Physical and Logical._

In order to break the force of all reasonings respecting the inherent
incredibility of the Trinitarian doctrine, the principle has been
frequently advanced, that a statement which would be contradictory, if
made respecting an object _within reach_ of our knowledge, cannot be
affirmed to be so, if applied to an object _beyond_ our knowledge; since
in the one case _we have_, in the other _we have not_, some experience
to guide our judgment, and serve as a criterion of truth. Thus, it is
said, to affirm of man, that his nature comprises more than one
personality, might, without presumption, be pronounced a contradiction;
because we are familiar with his constitution; but knowing nothing of
the mode of God’s existence, except what he is pleased to reveal, we
cannot prove the same statement to be contradictory, when made
respecting _his_ essence.

This rule, like all the Trinitarian reasonings on this subject, derives
its plausibility from an ambiguous use of terms. It has _one sense_ in
which it is true, but inapplicable to this subject; and _another_, in
which it is applicable, but false. The rule is sound or unsound,
according to the meaning which we assign to the word _contradiction_; a
word which, in other arguments besides this, has made dupes of men’s
understandings. There are obviously two kinds of contradiction:—one
relating to _questions of fact_, as when we say, it is contradictory to
experience that ice should continue solid in the fire; the other,
relating to questions of mere _thought_, as when we say, it is
contradictory to affirm that force is inert, or that the diameters of a
circle are unequal. The former of these suggests something _at variance
with the established order of causes and effects_, and constitutes _a
natural or physical_ impossibility; the latter suggests a _combination
of irreconcileable ideas_, constituting a _logical or metaphysical
impossibility_, or more properly, a _self_-contradiction.

It is almost self-evident that, in order to pronounce upon a physical
impossibility, we must possess _experience,_ and have a knowledge of the
properties of objects and successions of events external to us; and that
to pronounce on a metaphysical impossibility, we require only to have
the ideas to which it refers; of the coincidence or incompatibility of
which with each other, our own _consciousness_ is the sole judge. When I
deny that ice will remain frozen in the fire, I do so after frequent
observation of the effect of heat in reducing bodies, especially water,
from the solid to the liquid form; and in reliance on the intuitive
expectation which all men entertain, of like results from like causes.
Experience is the only justification of this denial; and _à priori_, no
belief could be held on the subject; a person introduced for the first
time to a piece of ice and to fire, could form no conjecture about the
changes which would follow on their juxtaposition. And as our judgment
in such cases has its origin, so does it find its limits, in experience;
and should it be affirmed that, in a distant planet, ice did not melt on
the application of fire, the right of denial would not extend to this
statement, because, our knowledge does not extend to the world to which
the phenomenon is referred. The natural state of mind, on hearing such
an announcement, might be expressed as follows; “If what you affirm be
true, either some _new cause_ must be called into operation,
counteracting the result which else would follow; or, some of the causes
existing here are withheld: the sequence, I am compelled to believe,
would be the same, unless the antecedents were _somehow_ different. Were
the fact even a miracle, this would still be true; for the introduction
of a new or different divine volition would be in itself a change in the
previous causes. But I am not authorized to pronounce the alleged fact
impossible; its variance from all the analogies of experience, justifies
me in demanding extraordinary evidence in its favour; but I do not say
that, in the infinite receptacle of causes unknown to the human
understanding, there cannot exist any from which such an effect might
arise.”

There is then, I conceive, _no physical_ impossibility, which might not
be rendered credible by adequate evidence; there is nothing, in the
constitution of our minds, to forbid its reception under certain
conditions of proof sufficiently cogent. It simply violates an
expectation which, though necessary and intuitive _before_ the fact, is
not incapable of correction _by_ the fact; it presents two successive
phenomena, dissimilar instead of similar; and between two occurrences,
allocated on different points of time, however much analogy may fail,
there can be no proper _contradiction_. The improbability that both
should be true, may attain a force _almost_, but never altogether
infinite; a force, therefore, surmountable by a greater. The thoughts
can at least entertain _the conception_ of them both; nor is it more
difficult to form the mental image of a piece of ice _unmelted_ on the
fire, than of the same substance melting away.

It is quite otherwise with a metaphysical impossibility or proper
contradiction. The variance is, in this case, not between _successive
phenomena_, but between _synchronous ideas_. We deny that the diameters
of a circle are unequal, without experience, without measurement, and
just as confidently respecting a circle in the remotest space, as
respecting one before our eyes. As soon as we have the ideas of
“circle,” “diameter,” “equality,” this judgment necessarily follows. Our
own consciousness makes us aware of the incompatibility between the idea
expressed by the word “circle,” and that expressed by the phrase
“unequal diameters;” the former word being simply _the name of a curve
having equal diameters_. The variance, in this case, is not between two
external occurrences, but between two notions within our own minds; and
simply _to have the notions_ is to _perceive their disagreement_. It
would be vain to urge upon us that, possibly, in regions of knowledge
beyond our reach, circles with unequal diameters might exist: we should
reply, that the words employed were merely the symbols of ideas in our
consciousness, between which we _felt_ agreement to be out of the
question; that so long as the words meant what they now mean, this must
continue to be the case; and that if there were any one, to whom the
same sound of speech suggested a truth instead of a falsehood, this
would only show, that the terms _did not stand for the same things_ with
him as with us. It will be observed that, in this case, we cannot even
attain _any conception_ of the thing affirmed; no mental image can be
formed of a circle with unequal diameters; make the diameters unequal,
and it is a circle no more.

A further analysis might, I believe, reduce more nearly under the same
class a physical and a metaphysical impossibility; and might show that
some of the language in which I have endeavoured to contrast them, is
not strictly correct. But the main difference, which the present
argument requires, (_viz._, that no experience can reconcile the terms
of a logical contradiction,) would only be brought out more clearly than
ever. I am aware, for instance, that the distinction which I have drawn
between my two examples,—that the latter deals with _ideas within us_,
the former with facts without us,—does not penetrate to the roots of the
question; that _external phenomena_ are nothing to us, till they become
_internal_; nothing, except through the perceptions and notions we form
of them; and that the variance therefore, even in the case of a physical
impossibility, must lie between our own ideas. I may accordingly be
reminded, that the notion of “melting with fire” is as essentially a
part of our idea of “ice,” as the notion of “equal diameters” is of our
idea of a “circle;” so that the final appeal might, with as much reason,
be made to our own consciousness in the one case as in the other. Might
it not be said, “so long as the word ice retains its meaning, the
proposition in question is a _self-contradiction_; for that word
signifies a certain substance that _will_ melt on the application of
heat?” This is true; and resolves the distinction which I have
endeavoured to explain into this form; the word “ice” may be kept open
to modifications of meaning, the word “circle” cannot. And the reason is
obvious. The idea of the material substance is a highly complex idea,
comprising the notion of many _independent_ properties, introduced to us
through several of our senses: such as solidity, crystalline form,
transparency, coldness, smoothness, whiteness, &c.; the quality of
fusion by heat is only _one among many_ of the ingredients composing the
conception; and should this even be found to be accidental, and be
withdrawn, the idea would still retain so vast a majority of its
elements, that its identity would not be lost, nor its name undergo
dismissal. But the notion of the circle is perfectly simple; being
_wholly made up_ of the idea of equal diameters, and of other properties
_dependent_ on this; so that if this be removed, the whole conception
disappears, and nothing remains to be denoted by the word. Hence, a
physical contradiction proposes to exclude from our notion of an object
or event one out of many of its constituents,—an alteration perfectly
akin to that which further experience itself often makes; a metaphysical
contradiction denies of a term _all_, or the _essential part_, of the
ideas attached to it. The materials for some sort of conception remain
in the one case, vanish in the other.

Now the terms employed in the statement of the doctrine of the Trinity
are _abstract_ words; “person,” “substance,” “being:” and the numerical
words “One” and “Three,” are all names for very simple ideas; not indeed
(except the two last) having the precision of quantitative and
mathematical terms; but having none of that complexity which would allow
them to _lose any meaning, and yet keep any_; to _change their sense
without forfeiting their identity_. The ideas which we have of these
words are as much within ourselves, and as capable of comparison by our
own consciousness, as the ideas belonging to the words _angle_ and
_triangle_; and when, on hearing the assertion that there are three
persons in one mind or being, I proceed to compare them, I find the word
“person” so far synonymous with the word “mind” or “being,” that the
self-contradiction would not be greater, were it affirmed that there are
three angles in one γωνία—the mere form of speech being varied to hide
the absurdity from eye and ear. To say that our ideas of the words are
wrong, is vain; for the words were invented on purpose to denote these
ideas: and if they are used to denote other ideas, which _we have not_,
they are vacant sounds. To assert that higher beings perceive this
proposition to be true, really amounts to this; that higher beings speak
English, (or at all events not Hebrew, or Hellenistic Greek,) but have
recast the meaning of these terms; and to say that we shall hereafter
find them to be true, is to say that our vocabulary will undergo a
revolution; and words used now to express one set of ideas, will
hereafter express some other. Meanwhile, to our present minds all these
future notions are nonentities; and using the words in question in the
only sense they have, they declare a plain logical contradiction. Hence,
every attempt to give consistency to the statement of the Trinity, has
broken out into a heresy; and the Indwelling and the Swedenborgian
schemes, the model Trinity of Wallis and Whately, the tritheistic
doctrine of Dr. W. Sherlock, are so many results of the rash propensity
to seek for clear ideas in a form of unintelligible or contradictory
speech. Σαφὴς ἔλεγχος ἀπιστίας τὸ πῶς περὶ Θεοῦ λέγειν.

---------------------

_On the Hebrew Plural Elohim._

The perseverance with which this argument from the Hebrew plural is
repeated, only proves the extent to which learning may be degraded into
the service of a system. The use of a noun, plural in form, but singular
in sense, and the subject of a singular verb, to denote the dignity of
the person named by the noun, is known to be an idiom common to all the
Semitic languages. Every one who can read a Hebrew Bible is aware that
this peculiarity is not confined to the name of God; and that it occurs
in many passages, which render absurd the inference deduced from it. For
instance, from Ezek. xxix. 3, it would follow that there is a plurality
of natures or “distinctions” in the crocodile, the name of which is
there found in the plural, with a singular adjective and singular
verb;—התנים הגדול הרבץ בתוך יאריו, “The great crocodile that lieth in
the midst of his rivers.” So in Gen. xxiv. 51, the plural form אדונים,
Lord, so constantly used of a human individual, is applied to Abraham:
ותחי אשה לבו אדוניך, “And she shall be a wife to the son of thy
_masters_,” _i.e._, thy _master_ Abraham. It is unnecessary to multiply
instances, which any Hebrew Concordance will supply in abundance. I
subjoin one or two additional authorities from eminent Hebraists, whose
theological impartiality is above suspicion.

Schroeder says, “Hebræi sermonis proprietas, quâ Pluralis, tam
masculinus, quam femininus, usurpari potest de _unâ re_, quæ in suo
genere magna est et quodammodo excellens; ut ימים, _maria_, pro _mari
magno_; תנים, _dracones_, pro _dracone prægrandi_; אדונים, _domini_, pro
_domino magno et potente_; אלהים, _numina_, pro _numine admodum
colendo_; קדשׁים, _sancti_, pro _deo sanctissimo_; בהמות, _bestiæ_, pro
_bestiâ grandi_, qualis est _elephas_; מכות _plagæ_, pro _plagâ gravi_;
נהרותּ, _flumina_, pro _flumine magno_.” N. G. Schroederi Institutiones
ad fundamm. ling. Hebr. Reg. 100. not. i.

Simonis. “Plur. adhibetur de Deo vero; ad insinuandam, ut multis visum
est, personarum divinarum pluralitatem; quod etiam alii, maxime Judæi
rectè negant: quoniam vel ibi in plurali ponitur, ubi ex mente
Theologorum de unâ modo triadis sacræ personâ sermo est, velut Ps. xlv.
7, adeoque gentium unus aliquis deus pluraliter אלהים dicitur, ut
Astarte 1 Reg. xi. 33; Baal muscarum et quidem is, qui Ekronæ colebatur
2, Reg. i. 2, 3. Denique sanctam triadem si אלהים significasset, multo
notior usuque adeo linguæ quotidiano tritior sub prisco fœdere hæc
doctrina fuisset, quam sub novo. Ex nostrâ sententiâ hic plur. indicio
est, linguam Hebræam sub Polytheismo adolevisse; eo vero profligato
plur. hic in sensum abiit majestatis et dignitatis.” Eichhorn’s Joh.
Simonis’ Lexicon Hebr. in verb. אלה, p. 120.

Buxtorf. אלהים, plurale pro singulari: Lex Chaldaicum, Talmudicum et
Rabbinicum; in verb.

Gesenius. אלהים _pluralis excellentiæ_: Gott, von der Einheit; wie
בעלים, אדנים. Hebr. und Chald. Handwörterbuch: in verb.

Even Lewis Capel, in his defence of this verbal indication of the
Trinity, admits the absurdity of using the argument with
Anti-trinitarians: “Siquis ergo vellet adversus Judæos, Samosatenianos,
aliosque sanctissimæ Trinitatis præfractos hostes, urgere hoc
argumentum, eoque uno et nudo uti, frustra omnino esset: ni prius
demonstraret falsam esse quam illi causantur phraseos istius rationem,
evinceretque eam in voce istâ אלהים locum habere non posse: _quod forte
non usque adeo facile demonstrari posset_. Atque eatenus tantùm jure
possunt suggillari Theologi, si argumento illo nudo, et solo, non aliâ
ratione fulto, utantur ad Judæos et Samosatenianos coarguendos et
convincendos; non vero si eo utantur ad piorum fidem jam ante aliunde
stabilitam, porro augendam atque fovendam.” Lud. Cappelli Critica Sacra.
De nom. אלהים Diatriba. c. vii. Ed. 1650, p. 676.

May we ask of our learned opponents, _how long_ the mysterious contents
of this plural have been ascertained? Who was the discoverer, forgotten
now by the ingratitude of Learning, but doubtless living still in the
more faithful memory of Orthodoxy? And why those of the Christian
Fathers, who devoted themselves to Hebrew literature, were not permitted
to discern the Trinitarianism of the Israelitish syntax? They had not
usually so dull an eye for verbal wonders.

The celebrated Brahmin, Rammohun Roy, whose knowledge of oriental
languages can be as little disputed, I presume, as the singular
greatness and simplicity of his mind, says: “It could scarcely be
believed, if the fact were not too notorious, that such eminent scholars
... could be liable to such a mistake, as to rely on this verse (Gen. i.
26. And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness,) as
a ground of argument in support of the Trinity. It shows how easily
prejudice, in favour of an already acquired opinion, gets the better of
learning.” And he proceeds to argue on “the idiom of the Hebrew, Arabic,
and of almost all Asiatic languages, in which the plural number is often
used for the singular to express the respect due to the person denoted
by the noun.” Rammohun Roy was, I believe, the first to call attention
to the fact, obvious to any one who will read a few pages of the Koran,
that Mohammed, whose belief in the strict personal Unity of the Divine
Nature gave the leading feature to his religion, constantly represents
God as speaking in these plural forms. I extract a few instances from
Sale’s Koran. Lond. 1734:

“God said; when _we_ said unto the angels, worship Adam,” &c.

“God said; and _we_ said, O Adam, dwell thou,” &c.—Ch. ii. p. 31.

“_We_ formerly created man of a finer sort of clay; ... and _we_ have
created over you seven heavens; and _we_ are not negligent of what _we_
have created: and _we_ send down rain from heaven by measure; and _we_
cause it to remain on the earth,” &c. “And _we_ revealed _our_ orders
unto him, saying; ... speak not unto _me_ in behalf of those who have
been unjust.” “God will say, did ye think that _we_ had created you in
sport,” &c.—Ch. xxiv. pp. 281, 282, 287.

In the very passages in which Mohammed condemns the doctrine of the
Trinity, the same form abounds: “_We_ have prepared for such of them as
are unbelievers a painful punishment.” “_We_ have revealed our will unto
thee.” “_We_ have given thee the Koran, as _we_ gave the psalms to
David.” “O ye who have received the Scriptures, exceed not the just
bounds in your religion; neither say of God any other than the truth.
Verily Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his
Word, which he conveyed into Mary, and a spirit proceeding from him.
Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not, There are three
Gods: forbear this; it will be better for you. God is but one God. Far
be it from him that he should have a Son! Unto him belongeth whatsoever
is in heaven and on earth.”—Ch. iv. pp. 80, 81.

---------------------

_On the Prophecy of an “Immanuel.”_

For the Interpretation which identifies “the Virgin” with the city of
Jerusalem, I am indebted to Rammohun Roy, who has justified it by
reasons which appear to me satisfactory. See his Second Appeal to the
Christian Public. Appendix II. Calcutta, 1821, p. 128 seqq. The use of
the definite article with the word (העלמה) points out _the_ Virgin as
some _known object_, who would be recognized by King Ahaz, without
further description. It will hardly be maintained that this prince was
so familiar with evangelical futurities, as to understand the phrase of
Mary of Nazareth. Nor does it seem at all likely that either the
prophet’s wife, or any other person not previously the subject of
discourse, should be thus obscurely and abruptly described. But if “the
Virgin” was a well-understood mode of speaking of Jerusalem, Ahaz would
be at no loss to interpret the allusion. And that this metaphor was one
of the common-places of Hebrew speech, in the time of the prophets,
might be shown from every part of their writings. “Thou shalt be built,
_O virgin of Israel_; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and
shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.”[264] “Then shall
_the_ _Virgin_ rejoice in the dance.”[265] “The Lord hath trodden the
Virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press.”[266] And Isaiah
himself uses this expression respecting a foreign city: “Thou shalt no
more rejoice, O thou oppressed Virgin, daughter of Sidon.”[267] And
expressing to the invader Sennacherib, the contempt which God authorized
Jerusalem to entertain for his threats, he says, “_The Virgin_, the
daughter of Zion, hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn.”[268]

It should he remembered, however, that the establishment of this
interpretation is by no means necessary to the proof of invalidity in
the Trinitarian application of the prophecy. The reasons which I have
adduced, together with the use in a neighbouring passage, of the phrase
“over the breadth of _thy land_, O Immanuel,”[269] appear to me to point
out some _prince_ as the Virgin’s Son. But many eminent interpreters
consider him as only one of the Prophet’s own children, “whom the Lord
had given him, for signs and for wonders in Israel.”[270] And the first
four verses of the next chapter certainly speak of Isaiah’s son in a
manner so strikingly similar, as to give a strong support to this
interpretation. But whatever obscurity there may be in the passage, the
one clear certainty in it is this: that it does _not_ refer to any
person to be born seven or eight hundred years after the delivery of the
prediction. And it is surely unworthy of any educated Theologian,
possessing a full knowledge of the embarrassments attending the
Trinitarian appeal to such texts, still to reiterate that appeal,
without any specification of the mode in which he proposes to sustain
it. Is it maintained that Jesus of Nazareth was the primary object of
the prophecy? Or will any one be found deliberately to defend the
hypothesis of a double sense? Or must we fear, that a lax and
unscrupulous use is often made of allusions which sound well in the
popular ear, without any distinct estimate of their real argumentative
value?

It is no doubt convenient to cut the knot of every difficulty by the
appeal to inspiration; to say, _e.g._, that Matthew applies the word
Emmanuel to Christ, and with a correctness which his infallibility
forbids us to impeach. But are our opponents prepared to abide by this
rule, to prove its truth, to apply it, without qualification, to the New
Testament citations from the Hebrew Scriptures? Will they, for instance,
find and expound, for the benefit of the church, the prophecy stated by
Matthew to have been fulfilled in Jesus, “He shall be called a
Nazarene?”[271] The words are declared to have been “spoken by the
prophets.” But they are not discoverable in any of the canonical
prophecies: so that _either_ the Evangelist took them from some inspired
work now lost,—in which case the canon is imperfect, and Christianity is
deprived of the benefit of certain predictions intended for its support;
_or_, he has cited them so incorrectly from our existing Scriptures,
that the quotation cannot be identified. I cannot refrain from
expressing my amazement, that those, whose constant duty it is to
expound the New Testament writings should be conscious of no danger to
their authority, when it is strained so far as to include an infallible
interpretation of the Older Scriptures.

---------------------

_On Isaiah_ ix. 6.

The translation of this passage is not unattended with difficulties: and
many of the versions which learned men have proposed leave nothing on
which the Trinitarian argument can rest. It is clear that divines ought
to establish the meaning of the verse, before they reason from its
theology. I subjoin a few of the most remarkable translations.

The Septuagint; “And his name shall be called ‘Messenger of a great
counsel;’ for I will bring peace upon the rulers, and health to him.”

The Targum of Jonathan; “And by the Wonderful in counsel, by the Mighty
God who endureth for ever, his name shall be called the Messiah (the
anointed), in whose days peace shall be multiplied upon us.” The
following allusion to the titles in this passage from Talmud Sanhedrim,
11 ch., will show to whom they were applied by Jewish commentators: “God
said, let Hezekiah, who has five names, take vengeance on the king of
Assyria, who has taken on himself five names also.”

Grotius; “Wonderful; Counsellor of the Mighty God; Father of the future
age; Prince of Peace.”

Editor of Calmet; “Admirable, Counsellor, Divine Interpreter, Mighty,
Father of Future time, Prince of Peace.”

Bishop Lowth; “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Father of the
everlasting age, the Prince of Peace.”

Many other translations might be added: and even if the prophecy were
not obviously spoken of Hezekiah, we might reasonably ask, what
doctrinal certainty can be found in so uncertain an announcement? And
how is the fact accounted for that, important as it was to the apostles’
success to make the largest possible use of their ancient scriptures,
not one of them ever alludes to this prediction?

---------------------

_On the Proem of John._

The objection which is most commonly entertained to the foregoing
interpretation of the Proem of St. John’s Gospel, arises from the
_strength and vividness_ of the personification of the Logos. A _real
personality_, it is said, must be assumed, in order to satisfy the terms
of the description, which could never have been applied by the apostle
to a mere mental creation.

I am by no means insensible to the force of this objection: though I
think it of less weight than the difficulties which beset every other
explanation. And it appears to be greatly relieved by two
considerations; first, that a considerable part of the difficulty arises
from a want of correspondence between the Greek and the English usage of
language; secondly, that this personification did not originate with the
apostle, but had become, by slow and definable gradations, an
established formula of speech.

1. The first of these considerations I will introduce to my readers in
the words of Archbishop Whately: “Our language possesses one remarkable
advantage, with a view to this kind of Energy, in the constitution of
its _genders_. All nouns in English, which express objects that are
really neuter, are considered as strictly of the neuter gender; the
Greek and Latin, though possessing the advantage (which is wanting in
the languages derived from them) of having a neuter gender, yet lose the
benefit of it, by fixing the masculine or feminine genders upon many
nouns denoting things inanimate; whereas in English, when we speak of
any such object in the masculine or feminine gender, that form of
expression at once confers _personality_ upon it. When ‘Virtue,’ _e.g._
or our ‘Country’ are spoken of as females, or ‘Ocean’ as a male, &c.,
they are, by that very circumstance, _personified_; and a stimulus is
thus given to the imagination, from the very circumstance that in calm
discussion or description, all of these would be neuter; whereas in
Greek or Latin, as in French or Italian, no such distinction could be
made. The employment of ‘_Virtus_,’ and Ἀρετὴ in the feminine gender,
can contribute, accordingly, no animation to the style, when they could
not, without a solecism, be employed otherwise.”[272]

Now let any one read the English Proem of John, and ask himself, _how
much_ of the appearance of personality is due to the occurrence, again
and again, of the pronouns “he,” “him,” “his,” applied to the Logos; let
him remember that _this much_ is a mere imposition practised unavoidably
upon him by the idiom of our language, and “_gives no animation to the
style_” in the original; and I am persuaded that the violence of the
personification will be tamed down to the apprehension of a very
moderate imagination. It is true that the Logos does not, by this
allowance, become impersonal; other parts of the personal conception
remain, in the _acts_ of creation and of illumination, attributed to
this Divine Power: and hence the substitution of the neuter pronouns
“it” and “its;” for the masculines “he,” “him,” “his,” though useful,
provisionally, for shaking off the English illusion to which I have
referred, cannot be allowed to represent the sentiment of the passage
faithfully.

There appears to be another peculiarity of our language and modes of
thought, as contrasted with the Greek, which exaggerates, in the Common
Translation, the force of the personification. The English language
leaves to an author a free choice of either gender for his
personifications: and the practical effect of this has been, that the
_feminine_ prosopopeia has been selected as most appropriate to abstract
qualities and attributes of the mind; and although instances are not
wanting of masculine representations of several of the human passions,
the figure is felt, in such cases, to be much more vehement and more
entirely beyond the limits of prose, than the employment of the other
gender. What imagination would naturally think of Pity, of Fear, of Joy,
of Genius, of Hope, as _male beings_? It may be doubted whether our most
imaginative prose writers present any example of a male personification
of an _attribute_: I can call to mind instances in the writings of
Milton and Jeremy Taylor, of this figure so applied to certain _material
objects_, as the Sun, the Ocean, but not to _abstract qualities or
modes_, unless when a conception is borrowed (as of “Old Time”) from the
ancient mythology. And accordingly, to an English reader, such a style
of representation must always appear forced and strange. But a writer in
a language like the Greek cannot choose the sex of his personifications;
it is decided for him, by the gender already assigned to the
abstraction, about which he is occupied; and both he and his readers
must accommodate their conceptions to this idiomatic necessity. In the
German, the _Moon_ is masculine; the _Sun_ feminine; and every reader of
that language knows the strange incongruities which, to English
perceptions, this peculiarity introduces into its poetical imagery. For
example, there is a German translation of Mrs. Barbauld’s Hymns in
prose; a passage of which, rendered literally into English would read
thus: “I will show you what is glorious. The Sun is glorious. When She
shineth in the clear sky, when She sitteth on the bright throne in the
heavens, and looketh abroad over all the earth, She is the most
excellent and glorious creature the eye can behold. The Sun is glorious;
but He that made the Sun is more glorious than She.” Again; “There is
the Moon, bending His bright horns, like a silver bow, and shedding His
mild light, like liquid silver, over the blue firmament.” In the Greek
literature, accordingly, the masculine personification of abstractions
is as easy and common as the feminine; and the former occurs in many
instances in which an English author, having free choice, would prefer
the latter: thus in Homer, Fear is a son of Mars:

Οἷος δὲ βροτολοιγὸς Ἄρης πόλεμόνδε μέτεισι,
Τῷ δὲ Φόβος, φίλος υἱὸς, ἅμα κρατερὸς καὶ ἀταρβὴς,
Ἕσπετο.[273]

But in Collins, a nymph:

“O Fear! ...
Thou who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad nymph! at last?”[274]

And so in Coleridge:

“Black Horror screamed, and all her goblin rout
Diminish’d shrunk from the more withering scene.”[275]

Pindar must make Envy a masculine power:

“Μὴ βαλέτω με λίθῳ τραχεῖ φθόνος.”[276]

Coleridge thus describes the same feeling, giving itself speech:

“... Shall Slander squatting near,
Spit her cold venom in a dead man’s ear?”[277]

And common as it is for English writers to give a feminine
personification to Wisdom and Genius, Philo expressly says they are of
the masculine gender (τῆς ἄῤῥενος γενεᾶς νοῦς καὶ λογισμὸς);[278] and
the husband of the other faculties of the soul.

The divine attributes are, I think, uniformly represented by the pronoun
_she_, in imaginative religious writers, like Bishop Taylor; mercy,
justice, goodness, thus assume, in the works of that great man, the same
form as Wisdom in the book of Proverbs; and it may be doubted whether,
if the apostle John had written in the English language and with English
feelings, the personification in his proem might not have presented
itself in the same shape. Any one who will read over the passage, with
this idea, will find, I think, that the figure, thus modified, appears
by no means inconceivable. Have we not, in the peculiarity of our
language to which I have alluded, one reason why English theologians
appear to have felt more difficulty than foreign divines in seizing the
true idea of the Logos; and why the disposition to consider it as an
objective and absolute Person has been much more prevalent among all
parties here, than on the Continent?

2. But a more important consideration, for the understanding of this
Proem, is this: that the Apostle is not the originator of the conception
respecting the Logos, but simply adopted it in the shape, towards which
it had been organizing itself for centuries. Three successive states of
the idea can be traced; in the Old Testament, it appears (in Prov.
viii.) as a mere transient personification of Divine Wisdom; in the
Apocryphal Books of Ecclesiasticus and of Wisdom, it presents itself in
a more permanent and mythical character; and, in the writings of Philo,
it assumes so embodied and hypostatized a form, as to perplex the
simplicity of his Monotheism. _From his writings, the whole Proem of his
contemporary John (except where the Baptist and Jesus are mentioned by
name) might be constructed._ This coincidence in phraseology so
remarkable, cannot be considered as accidental. Is it thought impossible
that John should say of an attribute of God, that it was with him from
the first? We reply, Philo _does_ say so; calling _Goodness_ the most
ancient of God’s qualities; _Wisdom_ older than the universe; Logos, the
Assessor (πάρεδρος and ὀπαδὸς) of God prior to all creations, a needful
companion of Deity, as the joint originator with him of all things.[279]
And the Son of Sirach says, in his personification of Wisdom: “I am come
out of the mouth of the most High, first-born before all creatures:” “He
created me from the beginning, and before the world.”[280] Is it said
that such a statement is unworthy of Revelation? We reply, it occurs in
the writings of Solomon: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his
way, before his works of old;” “then I was by him as one brought up with
him:”[281] where the feminine form (vv. 2, 3) totally excludes the idea
of Wisdom being anything more than a personification. Is it thought
impossible that an attribute of God should be called the only-begotten
Son of God? We turn to Philo, and find this same Logos entitled the most
Ancient Son of God (ὁ πρεσβύτατος υἱὸς θεοῦ), the First-begotten (ὁ
πρωτόγονος). Is it inconceivable that, through this transforming energy
of God, those who received it should be said to become Sons of God?
Philo says, “If you are not yet worthy to be denominated a Son of God,
be earnest to put on the graces of his First-begotten Logos,—the most
ancient angel, and, we may say, an archangel of various titles:” “for if
we are not prepared to be esteemed children of God, we may at all events
be thus related to the most Holy Logos, his eternal Image; for the most
Ancient Logos is the Image of God.”[282]

As all Theological considerations, suggested by heretics, are apt to be
dismissed with mere expressions of surprise and contempt, I am happy to
refer, in confirmation of the foregoing views, in the most essential
particulars, to an Orthodox Writer, whose accurate and various learning,
and sound and grave judgment, have given him a merited pre-eminence
among the Commentators on the Gospel of John. I allude to Professor
Lücke, whose “Commentar über das Evangelium des Johannes” I have had the
opportunity, since the delivery of this Lecture, of consulting. I wish
that I could lay before my readers the whole of his admirable history of
the rise and progress of the idea of the Logos; but I must content
myself with translating a few brief extracts.[283]

“The origin and germ,” he says, “of the theological Formula of the
Logos, are furnished in the Canonical Hebrew Books (alluding to certain
passages, especially Prov. viii. which he has been showing to be mere
poetical personifications of Divine Attributes). It obtained its full
development in the Jewish Theology, in the writings of the Alexandrine
Philo. And, in an intermediate state of formation, we find it in the
Greek Apocryphal books of the Old Testament.”

Lücke examines the conception in all these stages; and, from his
analysis of Philo’s mode of thought, I extract the following:

“According to Philo, God, in his interior Essence, is inconceivable,
occult, solitary (das absolute), self-comprised, and without relations
to any other existence.... Although the absolute cause of all that is,
God cannot, in his own essence, and immediately, operate on the
universe, either in the way of creation, preservation, or government.
Concealed in his absolute separation, God is manifest and an object of
knowledge in the world, only through his _Powers_ (δυνάμεις): these,
external forces of God in the universe, apart from his absolute essence,
are the necessary media of his presence in the universe.... These divine
δυνάμεις Philo calls sometimes _Ideas_, sometimes _Angels_, sometimes
_Logoi_. This identification of notions, powers, ideas, angels, logoi,
which is frequent in the writings of Philo, is of great importance for
the right apprehension of his doctrine of the Divine Logos. This Logos
he considers in a twofold relation. Sometimes he regards it as
_inherent_ (immanent), and refers it to him as a capacity (facultativ);
when it is the Divine νοῦς, analogous to the human. But this attributive
conception gives way to that of the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, as a living,
energetic δύναμις, which tends to external action. Of this, Philo, in
the spirit of Platonism, conceives as ἰδέα ἰδεῶν, the Ideal of things,
the archetypal Idea, the pattern World, the νοητὸς κόσμος, which is
extant in God as a reality, before all outward creations of the actual
universe. In this sense the λόγος is the primary energy of God,—the
ἐννόησις, the λογισμὸς θεοῦ λογιζομένου.

But, at the same time, the λόγος is also προφορικός; and, as a forming
activity, goes forth out of God. But as this is only another relation of
the Divine Logos, _viz._, relation to the world, so is it the _product_
of the former; yet essentially one with it, like the οἶκος of the
inherent Logos,—as human speech is the resident point of the idea, its
_form of manifestation_. All living, active relations of God to the
world, all his objective manifestations, are comprised in this emanated
Logos. He forms the world or creates it, imprinting himself on matter as
a Divine seal (σφραγὶς). And as he has created the world (or otherwise,
_God through_ him, δι’ αὐτοῦ,) so he preserves it; he is the indwelling
and sustaining power, full of light and life, and filling everything
with Divine light and life. So in the _human world_, he is both the
natural divine power of every soul, the pure intellect, the conscience;
and the bestower of wisdom, and the watch of virtue. He is the same with
the Wisdom of God, the Holy Spirit of God in his objective manifestation
in the world; partly because animating and inspiring men, particularly
in the capacity of Prophetic Spirit.

“Hence the Logos is the eldest Creation of God, the Eternal Father’s
eldest Son, God’s Image, Mediator between God and the World, the Highest
Angel, the Second God, the High-priest, the Reconciler, Intercessor for
the World and Men, whose manifestation is especially visible in the
history of the Jewish people.”[284]

It ought to be added, that some able writers, as Grossman and Gfrörer,
conceive that Philo invested his Logos with a real personality. The
reasons for this opinion do not appear to me to be satisfactory. Even
those who adopt it assign to this hypostasis a rank wholly subordinate,
in Philo’s estimation, to the Supreme God: and Lücke strenuously
maintains that both the Alexandrine philosopher and the apostle John
apply the name _God_ to the Logos only in a figurative sense (ἐν
καταχρήσει). He considers the clause “the Word was God,” merely
incidental, and unimportant compared with the preceding clause, “the
Word was with God.” “John,” he observes, “sums up the purpose of the
first verse in the words of the second; οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν.
From his not taking up again the idea θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, we must conclude,
that he considered this position only an accessory. Thus the πρὸς τὸν
θεὸν is evidently to be the more prominently marked assertion.” “John
would say, the primeval Logos is πρὸς τὸν θεὸν; that is, is in such
communion with God, stands in such relation to him, that he may be
called θεός. Looking at the historical connection between the mode of
expression in Philo and in John, there is no room for doubt, that θεὸς
is to be taken in the sense in which Philo applies the name θεός to the
ποιητικὴ δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ,—and explicitly calls the λόγος God—ὁ δεύτερος
θεός ; but to prevent misunderstanding, expressly subjoins that this is
only ἐν καταχρήσει. Though John, as we have seen, understands by the
Logos, a real Divine Person, he yet, as a Christian Apostle, held the
monotheistic conception of God in a still higher degree, and an
incomparably purer form (xvii. 3; 1 John v. 20) than Philo: and are we
then at liberty to suppose, that by him, less than by Philo, the
position θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος is meant simply ἐν καταχρήσει? It is true that
the substitution for θεὸς of the adjective θεῖος is at variance with the
analogy of New Testament diction: but must we not, with the Alexandrine
Fathers, especially Origen, conclude that θεὸς without the article, is
to be taken as marking the difference between the indefinite sense of
‘Divine nature,’ and the definite, absolute, conception of God,
expressed by ὁ θεὸς? Thus would John’s θεὸς correspond with Paul’s εἰκὼν
τοῦ θεοῦ. Such an accordance between the manner of Paul and of John is
an advantage which must appear an equally desirable result of exegesis,
whether we consider it in its dogmatical or its historical
relations.”[285]

From this extract it appears, that if the author does not approve of the
old Socinian interpretation, which considers the Logos as synonymous
from the first with Jesus Christ; it is not because he knows, that θεὸς
in the predicate cannot signify _a_ god; or slights Origen’s opinion on
the usage of N. T. and Hellenistic Greek. We have here an authority,
than which no higher can be produced from among the living or the dead,
in favour of a meaning which, to the fastidious scholarship of Liverpool
theologians, is absolutely intolerable. Lücke of course admits the
general rule, respecting the omission of the article with the
predicative noun; but he conceives (greatly to the horror, no doubt, of
those whose soul resides in syntax) that the good old Apostle would even
have committed a solecism in respect of a Greek article, for the sake of
clearing a great truth in respect of God. “If there had been any
intention to express the substantial unity of the Logos and God, we
should have expected the Apostle to write ὁ θεός. On account of the
equivocal meaning of θεὸς without the article, the article could not
possibly have been absent.”[286] It is vain to say that such corrupt
Greek as this cannot be ascribed to the Apostles. Here are examples from
John; ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία; [287] Τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν ἡ ἀλήθεια: [288]
and here are others from Paul; ὁ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν: [289] Παντὸς
ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν. [290] Nay, we have an example in the
following text, of a total inversion of the rule, the article being
attached to the predicate, and _not_ to the subject; εἰ ἔστι Κύριος
(יהוה) ὁ Θεὸς.[291]

It will be perceived by the text of this Lecture that I do not adopt the
rendering of the Alexandrine Fathers; but I am anxious, in rejecting it,
to pass no slight on the learning of those who maintain it; and to show
that, out of England, orthodoxy can afford to be wise and just.

I think it right to add, that to the view which has been given of the
Proem, an objection of some weight occurs in the twelfth verse. The
clause ‘to them that believe on his name’ presents the question, ‘who is
denoted by the pronoun _his_,—the Logos or Jesus Christ personally?’
According to the interpretation which I have recommended, it should mean
the former; according to the analogy of Scriptural diction, certainly
the latter. Feeling the force of the difficulty, I yet think it less
serious than those which attend every other hypothesis: and incline to
think, that the clause is an anticipation of the personal introduction
of the Incarnate Logos which immediately follows; a point of transition
from the personification to the history.

In conclusion, may I take occasion to correct an erroneous statement in
Mr. Byrth’s Lecture;—that Samuel Crell was a convert to Trinitarianism
before his death. “He died,” we are told, “a believer in the Supreme
Divinity of Christ, and the efficacy of his atoning sacrifice.”[292] I
have before me the most authentic collection of Socinian Memoirs which
has been published, by Dr. F. S. Bock, Greek Professor, and Royal
Librarian at Königsberg. The work is principally from original sources;
and the testimony of the following passage will probably be received as
unimpeachable. It appears that a vague statement in the Hamburgh
Literary News gave rise to the report of Crell’s conversion: “Obiit
Crellius Amstelodami, a. 1747. d. 12. Maii, anno æt. 87. In _novis
litterariis Hamburg._ 1747, p. 703, narratur, quod circa vitæ finem
errorum suorum ipsum pœnituerit, hujusque pœnitentiæ non simulatæ haud
obscura dederit documenta, quod Paulo Burgero, Archidiacono
Herspruccensi in iisdem novis publicis Hamb. 1748, p. 345, eam ob
caussam veri haud absimile videtur, quia sibi Amstelodami degenti
Crellius, a. 1731, oretenus testatus fuerit, in colloquiis cum Celeb.
Schaffio Lugdunensi institutis, quædam placita, jam sibi dubia reddita
esse, adeo ut jam anceps circa eadem hæreat. Sed in iisdem novis 1749,
p. 92, et p. 480, certiores reddimur: Crellium ad ultimum vitæ suæ
halitum perstitisse Unitarium, quod etiam frater ipsius, Paulus, mihi
coram pluribus vicibus testatus est.”[293]

---------------------

In the rendering which I have given to this passage the word ἁρπαγμὸς is
considered as equivalent to ἅρπαγμα. The interpretation, however, in no
way requires this; and if it should be thought necessary to maintain the
distinction between them, to which the analogy of Greek formation, in
the case of verbal nouns, undoubtedly points, and to limit the former to
the active sense of the “operation of seizing,” the latter to the
passive sense of “the object seized;” the general meaning will remain
wholly unaffected. The only difference will be this; that the _whole_ of
the sixth verse must, in that case, be considered as descriptive of the
rightful glory of Christ; and the transition to his voluntary
afflictions will not commence till the 7th. The signification of this
doubtful word simply determines, whether the clause in which it stands
shall be the last in the account of our Lord’s dignity, or the first in
the notice of his humiliation. The rendering, however, which I have
adopted, is confirmed by the use made of this passage in the most
ancient citation from this epistle. In the letter of the churches of
Vienne and Lyons, the 6th verse is quoted, without the sequel, and the
fact that Christ thought it not ἁρπαγμὸν to be equal with God, is
adduced as an example of _humility_; “who showed themselves so far
emulators and imitators of Christ; who being in the form of God thought
not his equality with God, a thing to be eagerly seized.”—Euseb. Eccl.
Hist. Lib. V. § 2. Heinichen, vol. ii. p. 36.

With considerable variation of expression, the same idea occurs in the
(1st) Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians. “Christ is theirs
who are humble. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the sceptre of the majesty of
God, came not in the show of pride and pre-eminence, though he could
have done so; but in humility. Ye see, beloved, what is the model which
has been given us.” C. xvi. If the Trinitarian view of the mediatorial
office of Christ be correct, it is not easy to perceive how he could
have come in the show of pride and pre-eminence; had he not laid aside
the glories of his Deity, and clothed himself with a suffering humanity,
his mission, as commonly conceived, could have had no existence, nor any
one purpose of it have been answered. But he might have been the great
Hebrew Messiah, had he not chosen rather, by a process of suffering and
death, to put himself into universal and spiritual relations to all men.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture V.

Footnote 164:

Analogy of Religion, part ii. ch. 3.

Footnote 165:

Sermon on the Integrity of the Canon, p. 80.

Footnote 166:

Dr. Tattershall’s Sermon on the Integrity of the Canon, p. 81.

Footnote 167:

Elements of Logic. Appendix, in verb. Person.

Footnote 168:

See Note A.

Footnote 169:

See Mr. Jones’s Lecture on the Proper Humanity of our Lord Jesus
Christ, pp. 241, 242.

Footnote 170:

Genesis, xviii. 1, 2, 22; xix. 1, 10, 15.

Footnote 171:

Deut. xxix. 2, 5, 6.

Footnote 172:

It is hardly necessary to observe, that I use the word “Athanasian” to
denote the doctrine of the _Creed_ so called; not of St. Athanasius
himself, who is known to have had no hand in the composition of that
formula.

Footnote 173:

Jesus Christ, the great God our Saviour, pp. 81, 369.

Footnote 174:

It is orthodox, at the present day, to affirm that the mysteries of
the Godhead and Incarnation of our Lord were explicitly taught by
himself throughout his ministry, as well as by his apostles
afterwards; and Mr. Jones (Lecture, p. 237) assures us that he
“received _divine homage_, whilst on earth, from inspired men and
angelic spirits.” This shows how much more clear-sighted is modern
orthodoxy than was ancient: for the Fathers thought that a great part
of the “mystery” of these doctrines consisted in the _secrecy_ in
which they were long wrapped. “In the silence of God,” Ignatius
assures us, were the Incarnation and the Lord’s death accomplished;
and the ecclesiastical writers of the first six centuries seem not
only to have admitted that our Lord concealed his divinity from his
disciples, and enjoined on his apostles great caution in this matter,
but to have discerned in this suppression a profound wisdom, of which
they frequently express their admiration. They urge that the Jews
could never have been brought round to the faith, if these doctrines
had not been kept back for a while,—a strange thing, by the way, if
the whole ritual and Scriptures of this people were created to
prefigure these mysteries. But Ignatius threw out a suggestion, which,
from the eagerness wherewith it was caught up by succeeding writers,
was evidently thought a happy discovery: it was necessary _to conceal
these mysteries from the Devil, or he would have been on his guard,
and defeated everything_. The hint of the venerable saint is brief:
“The Virginity of Mary, and the Birth and Death of the Lord were
hidden from the Prince of this world.” But the idea is variously
enlarged upon by the later Fathers; for, as Cotelier observes, “Res
ipsa quam Ignatius exprimit, passim apud sanctos Patres invenitur.”
Jerome adds, that the vigilance of the Devil, who expected the Messiah
to be born in some Jewish _family_, was thus eluded; and the Author of
an anonymous fragment of the same age, cited by Isaac Vos, suggests
that, if Satan had known, he would never have put it into men’s hearts
to crucify Jesus. And Jobius, a monk of the sixth century, quoted by
Photius in his Bibliotheca, and complimented by the learned Patriarch
as τῶν ἱερῶν γραφῶν μελέτης οὐκ ἄπειρος, says, “It was necessary to
keep in the shade the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, both for
the sake of conciliating the hearers, and in order to escape the
notice of the Prince of Darkness.”—See S. Ignat. Ep. ad Magnes. ch.
xix.; Patr. Apost. Le Clerc’s Ed. Notes; and Priestley’s Early
Opinions, b. iii, ch. 3, 4.

Footnote 175:

Lambertus Danaus, cited by Drusius, in his Diss. de nom. Elohim. Crit.
Sacr. Tractatt. t. 1. See also Drus. de quæsitis per Epist. 66.

Footnote 176:

Comment. in Gen. i. 1. Calvin adds, “Imagining that they have here a
proof against the Arians, they involve themselves in the Sabellian
error: because Moses afterwards subjoins that _Elohim spake_, and that
_the Spirit of Elohim brooded over the waters_. If we are to
understand that the three Persons are indicated, there will be no
distinction among them: for it will follow that the Son was
self-generated, and that the Spirit is not of the Father, but of
himself.” For further notice of this point see Note B.

Footnote 177:

Grammar of the Hebrew Language, art. 228, 6. Note.

Footnote 178:

See Scripture Proofs and Scriptural Illustrations of Unitarianism, by
John Wilson, second edition, 1837, p. 33, where will be found a
curious table, exhibiting the usage of the word _God_, in every book
of the New Testament. Mr. Wilson has collected his materials with
great industry, and arranged them with skill.

Footnote 179:

Matt. i. 23.

Footnote 180:

Isaiah vii. 14. The whole passage is as follows:

“Behold the virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son;
And she shall call his name Emmanuel.
Butter and honey shall he eat,
When he shall know to refuse what is evil,
and to choose what is good:
For before this child shall know
To refuse the evil, and to choose the good;
The land shall become desolate,
By whose two kings thou art distressed.”

Footnote 181:

Quoted from Wilson’s Illustrations, p. 117.

Footnote 182:

Letters on the Trinity, by Moses Stuart, Professor of Sacred
Literature in the Theological Seminary, Andover, U.S. Belf. ed. p.
161.

Footnote 183:

Scripture Testimony to the Messiah, 2nd edit. vol. i. p. 382.

Footnote 184:

Amos v. 2.

Footnote 185:

Jeremiah xiv. 17.

Footnote 186:

Micah iv. 8, 9. See the whole context.

Footnote 187:

See Note C.

Footnote 188:

Isaiah ix. 5, 6.

Footnote 189:

Isaiah viii. 23-ix. 4. Compare 2 Kings xv. 29; 1 Chronicles v. 26.

Footnote 190:

Martin Luther’s Version, _in loc._

Footnote 191:

See Note D.

Footnote 192:

Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος.

Footnote 193:

Λόγος προφορικός.

Footnote 194:

Phil. Jud. Op. Schrey et H. J. Meyer. Francof. 1691. De Mundi opific.
p. 5. C. p. 6. C. Leg. Alleg. p. 93. B, C, D. De somniis, pp. 574. E.
575. C. E. 576. E. De confus. Ling. p. 341. B. C. Quis rer. div.
hæres. p. 509. B. C. Euseb. Prep. Evang. VII. 13.

Footnote 195:

See Note E.

Footnote 196:

1 Tim. iii. 16.

Footnote 197:

Εἷς θεός ἐστιν, ὁ φανερώσας ἑαυτὸν διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ υἱοῦ
αὐτοῦ.—S. Ignatii Epist. ad Magnes. c. viii.

Footnote 198:

Δι’ οὗ, not ὑφ’ οὗ.

Footnote 199:

Psalm xlv.

Footnote 200:

v. 1-9.

Footnote 201:

v. 10-17.

Footnote 202:

New Translation of the Psalms, by Dr. M. Young, Bishop of Clonfert;
_in loc._ Comp. Preface.—When resident in Dublin, I enjoyed the
advantage of consulting this posthumous work, suppressed before its
publication, for reasons sufficiently obvious to those who know the
work, and have noticed the reception which orthodoxy gives to honest
and impartial biblical criticism and exegesis. See Mr. Wellbeloved’s
Bible _in loc._ where Bishop Young’s translation is cited. May I
venture to refer our learned opponents to the last-mentioned work,
whenever they think proper to examine what kind of Old Testament
theology a Unitarian may hold? It would be curious to know, probably
perplexing even to “ordained clergymen” to determine, on which horn of
the dilemma the Rev. Hebraists in Christ Church must fix Mr.
Wellbeloved;—“_defective scholarship?_”—or “_uncandid and dishonest
criticism?_”

Footnote 203:

See Acts iii. 19-21; xiii. 33-37; xxvi. 6-8. Hebrews ii. 5. Titus ii.
12, 13. 1 Tim. iv. 1. James v. 3, 7, 8. 1 Cor. x. 11. Phil. iv. 5. 2
Thess. ii. 2.

Footnote 204:

2 Pet. iii. 13.

Footnote 205:

1 Pet. iii. 20.

Footnote 206:

Acts xvii. 31.

Footnote 207:

Rom. i. 4.

Footnote 208:

Acts xiii. 30-34. comp. Heb. i. 5.

Footnote 209:

Heb. i. 3.

Footnote 210:

2 Pet. iii. 9.

Footnote 211:

Heb. i. 3.

Footnote 212:

Paraphrase on the Epistles; Rom. xiii. 11, 12. Note.

Footnote 213:

From the word GOD, supposed to be addressed to Christ, in the clause
“Thy throne, O God, &c.,” the Deity of our Lord, as _a second person
in the Trinity_, is inferred. Yet this word, in the original, is
ELOHIM, whose plural form, we are told, is intended to prevent our
thinking of only One Person, and which cannot mean less than _the
whole Trinity_.

Footnote 214:

1 John v. 20.

Footnote 215:

Notes _in loc._

Footnote 216:

Newcome.

Footnote 217:

2 John 7.

Footnote 218:

Phil. ii. 5-8.

Footnote 219:

2 Cor. viii. 9.

Footnote 220:

See Note F.

Footnote 221:

These texts naturally arrange themselves thus:

Condescension.
Philippians ii. 5-8.
2 Corinthians viii. 9.

Exaltation.
Phil. ii. 9-11.
Eph. i. 20-23.
Col. i. 15-19.
Heb. i.

Footnote 222:

Col. i. 15-19. Comp. Eph. iii. 19; where the apostle desires that _the
Ephesians_ may “_be filled with all the fulness of God_.”

Footnote 223:

Note _in loc._

Footnote 224:

Acts xiv. 15.

Footnote 225:

Eph. ii. 10.

Footnote 226:

2 Cor. v. 17.

Footnote 227:

1 Cor. xv. 24.

Footnote 228:

1 Thess. iv. 14.

Footnote 229:

1 Cor. xv. 51. 1 Thess. iv. 17; v. 10.

Footnote 230:

Eph. i. 10.

Footnote 231:

2 Thess. i. 9.

Footnote 232:

Heb. i. 6; Phil. ii. 10.

Footnote 233:

Heb. xii. 28.

Footnote 234:

2 Tim. ii. 12.

Footnote 235:

1 Thess. iv. 14.

Footnote 236:

Rom. viii. 19, 23, 6.

Footnote 237:

1 Pet. i. 5.

Footnote 238:

Eph. ii. 21, 22.

Footnote 239:

Eph. ii. 23.

Footnote 240:

1 Cor. viii. 6.

Footnote 241:

John xvii. 3.

Footnote 242:

John iv. 23, 24.

Footnote 243:

Eph. iv. 6.

Footnote 244:

This is the source to which our opponents in the present controversy
have explicitly referred the divine wisdom of Christ. Mr. Jones says,
“Unaided by the fulness of _the Godhead which dwelt within him
bodily_,” (did _the Father_, according to the Creeds, dwell in him
bodily?) “his human soul was, necessarily, finite in its operations.”
And again, “Nor could he, as we have already intimated, know anything
beyond the ken of a finite intelligence, except it were _revealed to
him by the_ ETERNAL WORD, with which he was mysteriously united.”
Christ says, “as MY FATHER _hath taught me_, I speak these things.”
Was his “_Father_” “the _eternal Word_?”—See _Lect. on the Proper
Humanity, &c._ pp. 221, 243.

Footnote 245:

John v. 19, 30.

Footnote 246:

Ib. xiv. 10.

Footnote 247:

Ib. vi. 57.

Footnote 248:

Ib. v. 36.

Footnote 249:

Ib. x. 29.

Footnote 250:

Mark xiii. 32.

Footnote 251:

With respect to the meaning of the name, “THE SON,” our opponents
appear to vary their statements in a way which serves the ends of
controversy more than those of truth. Mr. Jones says that in the
passages which I have adduced, the Trinitarian hypothesis “finds no
hindrance whatever,” because the word SON denotes in them our Lord’s
_human and Mediatorial_ character. Mr. Bates denies that the word can
have any such meaning. In defending the supreme Divinity of Christ, as
well as of the Holy Spirit, from what is incorrectly called the
Baptismal _Form_, (“baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”) he begs us to observe that it is _not
into the name of Christ the Mediator_ that converts are to be
baptized. “Our Saviour’s words,” he affirms, “not only fail to
sanction, but _expressly exclude_, such a construction; for he does
not say, ‘the name of the Father and of _myself_,’ but ‘of THE SON,’
that is, of THE ETERNAL WORD.” Mr. Bates’s Lecture is not published;
but he is aware that this statement is correct. Since this name “_the
Son_” “expressly excludes” the Mediatorial character, and _must_ mean
the Eternal Word, may we ask Mr. Bates, how it is the Eternal Word did
not know the day and the hour, and could do nothing of himself?—_Mr.
Jones’s Lect._ p. 242.

Footnote 252:

John vi. 62.

Footnote 253:

Ib. iii. 13.

Footnote 254:

John xvii. 5.

Footnote 255:

Acts ii. 32.

Footnote 256:

Gal. i. 1.

Footnote 257:

John x. 18.

Footnote 258:

Wardlaw’s Discourses, iv. p. 117.

Footnote 259:

Acts xvii. 31.

Footnote 260:

John v. 30.

Footnote 261:

John v. 29. It is very difficult to determine whether this class of
passages is rightly interpreted as referring to a final and collective
judgment of mankind. The discussion of this point does not properly
belong to our present subject; and the assumption, for the sake of
brevity of argument, of the usual interpretation, does not imply
assent to it.

Footnote 262:

Tillotson’s Sermons, xlvi. Lond. 1704. pp. 549, 550.

I am aware that the name of this admirable writer is not likely to
have much weight with our opponents; for in speaking of Socinian
writers he has indulged in a spirit of justice, which the modern
Orthodoxy of his Church appears to consider altogether old-fashioned.
The Archbishop gives the following character of the school which took
its name from the Socini; “And yet to do right to the writers on that
side, I must own, that generally they are a pattern of the fair way of
disputing, and of debating matters of religion without heat and
unseemly reflections upon their adversaries, in the number of whom I
did not expect that the Primitive Fathers of the Christian Church
would have been reckoned by them. They generally argue matters with
that temper and gravity, and with that freedom from passion and
transport, which becomes a serious and weighty argument; and for the
most part they reason closely and clearly, with extraordinary guard
and caution, with great dexterity and decency, and yet with smartness
and subtilty enough; with a very gentle heat, and few hard
words;—virtues to be praised wherever they are found, yea even in an
enemy, and very worthy our imitation.” Yet the Archbishop, as if aware
that his candour might, by a very natural process, excite suspicion of
his Orthodoxy, raises himself above imputation by adding, “In a word,
they are the strongest managers of a weak cause, and which is
ill-founded at the bottom, that perhaps ever yet meddled with
controversy; insomuch that some of the Protestants and the generality
of the Popish writers, and even of the Jesuits themselves, who pretend
to all the reason and subtilty in the world, are in comparison of them
but mere scolds and bunglers; upon the whole matter, they have but
this one great defect, that they want a good cause and truth on their
side; which if they had, they have reason and wit and temper enough to
defend it.”—_Sermon_ xliv. p. 521.

Footnote 263:

Mr. Stewart recommends to our imitation the conduct of a Jewish child
who became anxious to pray, like his companions, to Jesus Christ, not,
apparently, from any impulse of the affections, or any convictions of
duty; but from a prudent desire to run no risk of offending any
possible power. “When I go to heaven and see Jesus Christ, if he is
God,” calculates the boy, “I shall be ashamed to look him in the
face.” Is it possible that this principle of making sure of one’s
self-interest without regard to sincerity and truth, can be published
without a blush, from a Christian pulpit? And is Christ so little
known as yet, that such hollow worship is thought to be a passport to
his favour, instead of winning from him a rebuke that, in truth, must
make ashamed? Is the Infinite hearer of prayer,—whatever be his name
or names,—one who will turn away from a contrite and trustful
supplication of the soul, unless his titles are all set right upon the
lips? What then would become of the millions of entreaties and of
cries that daily rise from the grieving earth to the blessed God?
Impossible! ’twould make Heaven a vast Dead-letter Office, for
returning petitions on account of a wrong address.

Footnote 264:

Jer. xxxi. 4.

Footnote 265:

Jer. xxxi. 13.

Footnote 266:

Lam. i. 15.

Footnote 267:

Is. xxiii. 12.

Footnote 268:

2 Kings xix. 21.

Footnote 269:

Is. viii. 8.

Footnote 270:

Is. viii. 18.

Footnote 271:

Matt. ii. 23.

Footnote 272:

Elements of Rhetoric, part iii. ch. ii. § 3.

Footnote 273:

Il. xiii. 298.

Footnote 274:

Ode to Fear.

Footnote 275:

Sonnet xii.

Footnote 276:

Olymp. viii. 73.

Footnote 277:

Juvenile Poems, p. 59.

Footnote 278:

De vict. p. 838. D.

Footnote 279:

Quod Deus sit immut. p. 309. A. De charit. p. 609. A. De Temul. p.
244. D. Leg. Alleg. p. 93. B.

Footnote 280:

Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 5, 12.

Footnote 281:

Prov. viii. 22, 30.

Footnote 282:

Κᾂν μηδέπω μέντοι τυγχάνῃ τὶς ἀξιόχρεως ὢν υἱὸς θεοῦ προσαγορεύεσθαι,
σπούδαζε κοσμεῖσθαι κατὰ τὸν πρωτόγονον αὐτοῦ λόγον, τὸν ἄγγελον
πρεσβύτατον, ὡς ἀρχάγγελον πολυώνυμον ὑπάρχοντα.... Καὶ γὰρ εἰ μήπω
ἱκανοὶ θεοῦ παῖδες νομίζεσθαι γεγόναμεν, ἀλλά τοι τῆς ἀϊδίου εἰκόνος
αὐτοῦ λόγου τοῦ ἱερωτάτου· θεοῦ γὰρ εἰκὼν, λόγος ὁ πρεσβύτατος. De
conf. ling. p. 341. B. C.

Footnote 283:

I have an impression of having seen advertised an English translation
of this work; but I have no means of ascertaining the fact.

Footnote 284:

For the sake of brevity I have given rather an abstract than a
translation. Commentar. üb. das Evang. des Johan. von Dr. Friedrich
Lücke. Band. i. p. 232-p. 238. Bonn. 1833. It is possible that
Professor Lücke’s Orthodoxy, which, in conformity with the prevailing
estimate of his countrymen, I have ventured to assume, may be called
in question. It is always difficult to take the “regula fidei,”
recognized in one Country, and apply it, with any exactitude, to the
sentiments of another, especially when the one is remarkable for the
hard and literal character of its theological conceptions; and the
other, for the excessive refinements by which it has discriminated the
shades of religious belief. If tried by the only German standard which
has any near correspondence with English Evangelicism, I mean the
severe school of Guerike, Tholuck, Hahn, Olshausen, Lücke would, no
doubt, be pronounced deficient in the faith. But he belongs to the
class which approaches most nearly to them, both in the interpretation
of Scripture, and in the estimate of its authority. He does not, with
them, refuse to compare the doctrines of Scripture with the
conclusions of Reason, and insist that the authority of the former
supersedes all recourse to the latter; but having ascertained first
the _fact_ and the _meaning_ of Revelation, he then permits the
comparison with philosophy, and declares their entire consistency. He
thus belongs to the Scriptural section of what is called the
Philosophical School of German Theology. He is decidedly Trinitarian
and Anti-rationalist; and his orthodoxy has never been suspected, as
has that of Schleiermacher, the father of his school. He was Professor
of Theology in Göttingen before the recent political divisions in
Hanover.

Footnote 285:

Pp. 263, 266, 267.

Footnote 286:

P. 265.

Footnote 287:

1 John iii. 4.

Footnote 288:

1 John v. 6.

Footnote 289:

2 Cor. iii. 17.

Footnote 290:

1 Cor. xi. 3.

Footnote 291:

1 Kings xviii. 21. There would be no difficulty in increasing the
number of instances exemplifying this solecism.

Footnote 292:

P. 157.

Footnote 293:

Historia Antitrinitariorum, maximè Socinianismi et Socinianorum; Fred.
Sam. Bock, Tom. I. P. i. pp. 167, 168.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE

SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION

INCONSISTENT WITH ITSELF,

AND WITH

_THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF SALVATION_.

---------------------

PREFACE.

It will be apparent, from the unusual length of the following discourse,
that its limits have been much extended since its delivery. The
additional portions furnish, in detail, the interpretation which appears
to me to reach the true meaning of the New Testament language,
respecting the death of Christ. Few passages, I believe, relating to
this subject, will be found unnoticed: and it is probable that, in the
desire to avoid omission, I have been guilty of some prolixity and
repetition.

The friendly diversity of opinion, which prevails among Unitarian
Christians, is perhaps more considerable in reference to the subject of
this Lecture, than to any other of the leading topics of theological
belief. The reader will do justice to all parties, by bearing this in
mind, while attending to the following pages; and by regarding every
statement which he disapproves, as the mere expression of individual
opinion.

It is impossible for me to leave unnoticed the charge of uncharitable
violence and “vulgar personality,” which Mr. M‘Neile has preferred
against me, on the ground of certain strong expressions, contained in my
first Lecture, respecting the late Archbishop Magee. I readily
acknowledge that the instances are rare, which can justify the language
which I employed; and I would never employ such, did I not feel that it
was not simply justified, but demanded. He must be an unworthy
controversialist, who has no generous delight in admiring and respecting
a doctrinal adversary; no concern and shame at the moral obliquities
which prove an opponent wrong, without proving himself to be right. If
Mr. M‘Neile could enable me to look with his eyes of confidence and
regard on “the illustrious Prelate,” I should esteem it a privilege to
recal every word which I have put on record respecting him. But a
careful study of his Treatise on the Atonement, with the habit of
_testing his citations_, has revealed to me a system of controversy
which, before, I should have esteemed incredible; and which no terms of
censure can too severely describe. Polemical discipline, it has been
observed with too much truth, is, of all influences, the most dangerous
to the moral sense.

It seems to have been thought wrong in me, by my respected opponents, to
state my _general impression_ of Archbishop Magee’s controversial
character, without justifying it by specific arguments. And so it would
have been, if this work had really been “unanswered:” but every quality
which I ascribed to it, has been shown to belong to it, by Dr.
Carpenter; _his_ work has received no reply; and surely a bystander may
express a judgment on the merits of a controversy, and the polemical
characters of its conductors, without the slightest obligation to lay
open the contents of the discussion in self-justification. This appears
to be Mr. Buddicom’s opinion, if we may judge from the pungent sentence
in which he has characterized, without proof, one of Mr. Harris’s
Discourses.[294] In the present publication, however, I have supplied
the deficiency which is the subject of complaint; and have shown, not
only that the late Archbishop of Dublin dealt in terms of insult, which,
if spoken instead of written, no cultivated and Christian society would
endure; but that, with a shocking eagerness to blast the character of
his opponents, he corrupted the text of their writings, and drew his
arguments from garbled quotations. If any one can convince me of mistake
in what I have advanced, I shall most unfeignedly rejoice and retract.
But till then I cannot qualify any expressions, however strong, which I
have employed; for they are not the utterance of passion, but the
measured language of conviction. Most unwillingly would I ever incur the
risk of wounding “the feelings of the living,” by animadversions on the
character of the dead. But, surely, personal attachments to the man must
not be allowed to silence all public estimate of the author; and against
the attempt, on this ground, to hold me up as the assailant of private
affections, and the insincere professor of charity, I protest, as cruel
and unjust. It is not true that I attacked “the name and memory” rather
than “the book,” of the late Archbishop: the words which I used
described nothing but his work: and that they were words of moral
reprehension, arose necessarily from the nature of the complaint which
we have to prefer against its contents. I do not understand the
diplomatic arts by which a man may be analyzed into a plurality of
characters, and permitted to do wrong in one capacity, while his
reputation takes a quiet shelter among the rest: nor have I the
ingenuity to rebuke falsehood in a book, yet save the veracity of the
author. If the “outrage” consisted in publishing an impression,
unsustained by evidence, I only fear, that the addition of the proof
will be found to bring no mitigation of the pain.

Let me add, that I entirely acquit our Rev. opponents of any approbation
of the controversial arts employed by the Prelate whom they defend.
Their admiration of his book arises, I am aware, from ignorance of its
real character; to understand which requires a much greater acquaintance
with Unitarian literature than they appear, in any instance, to possess.

Lest it should be thought disrespectful in me to pass without notice the
strictures on my last published Discourse, contained in the Ninth
Lecture of the Trinitarian series, I will ask the indulgence of my
readers for a few moments more.

Mr. Bates accuses me of making a mutilated quotation from Deut. xxix.
1-6. The whole passage stands thus; the part which I did not cite being
included in brackets: [“1. These are the words of the covenant, which
the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land
of Moab, beside the covenant, which he made with them in Horeb. 2. And]
Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, [ye have seen all that
the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and
unto all his servants, and unto all his land; 3. The great temptations
which thine eyes have seen, the signs, and those great miracles: 4. Yet
the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and
ears to hear, unto this day. 5. And] I have led you forty years in the
wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and thy shoe is not
waxen old upon thy foot. 6. Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye
drunk wine, or strong drink; that ye might know that _I am the Lord your
God_.”

My object was to show, that, if no latitude is to be allowed in the
application of mere grammatical principles of interpretation, we must
admit “that Moses is called God with a distinctness which cannot be
equalled in the case of Christ.” For this purpose, I had no occasion to
quote more than the 5th and 6th verses, containing the phrase, “I am the
Lord your God;” the only question being, _who is the speaker,
grammatically denoted by the first personal pronoun “I.”_ To make this
evident, I went back to the opening of the sentence, which determined
this point: “MOSES called together all Israel, AND SAID to them.” The
omitted clauses of his speech have no relation whatever to the matter in
debate, and have no effect, but to _separate the parts_, without
_altering the nature_, of the grammatical construction. So far from
proving that Moses speaks, as if _personally identified_ with the Lord,
because teaching in his name, they prove just the reverse; for Jehovah
is introduced in them in the _third person_, not the _first_; “ye have
seen all that THE LORD (not ‘I’) did before your eyes,” &c. The first
verse I did not quote, because it seems to belong to the preceding
chapter, and to have no reference to the words cited. The only
delinquency in this matter which I have to confess is, that I wrote by
mistake, “Moses called TOGETHER,” instead of “UNTO, all Israel.” Mr.
Bates draws attention to this by Roman capitals, as if to hint at
something very remarkable in the error. I can only say, that after
repeated examination of the word “UNTO,” I can discover no mysterious
significance in it; if it be an orthodox tetragrammaton, my disregard of
its claims was wholly inadvertent. As to the argument itself which this
passage was adduced to enforce, I cannot perceive that it is in any way
affected by the Lecturer’s remarks: nor can any one reasonably doubt
that if the New Testament had contained such a passage as this, “The
Lord Jesus called unto the multitudes and said, ... I have led you into
a desert place, and fed you with the five loaves; that ye might know
that I am the Lord your God;” Trinitarians would have appealed to it as
a triumphant proof of the Deity of Christ, whatever number of clauses
might have severed the beginning from the end of the sentence, and
however often the name of the Lord, in the third person, might have
occurred in the interval.

Nor have I been successful in discovering in what way I have
misapprehended Mr. Bates’s meaning respecting the word “SON,” in the
following verse; “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” I may
doubtless have misstated his words; and if in his eyes the misstatement
has any “serious inaccuracy,” I sincerely regret its occurrence. Nothing
but the constant habit of short-hand writing, enabling me to take
verbatim reports of public addresses, would have given me confidence
enough in my correctness to found an argument on an unpublished verbal
criticism. Even short-hand, however, being fallible, I relinquish the
words: and the more willingly, because Mr. Bates’s own report appears to
me absolutely identical in meaning with my own. _He says_, that the
baptism enjoined in the verse just cited cannot, so far as our Lord is
concerned, be “baptism in the name of a Mediator;” “our Lord’s words
prevent such misapprehension: he says not ‘In the name of the Father and
in my name’ (my mediatorial name); but ‘In the name of the Father and of
THE SON,’—the only begotten, co-essential, co-eternal, and co-equal,
with the Father and the Holy Ghost.” _I represented him as saying_, that
our Saviour’s words “_expressly exclude such a construction_; for he
does not say, the name of the Father, and _of myself_, but of THE SON,
that is the ETERNAL WORD.” The difference between “preventing such
misapprehension” and “excluding such construction” is not very obvious.
I understand the argument to be, that there is something _in the form of
expression in the second clause_, forbidding us to think of anything
less exalted than our Lord’s Divine Nature; the only expression
contained in the clause is “THE SON;” this term then, I imagined, was
limited by the Lecturer to Christ’s Divine Nature; and must have been
replaced by some other phrase, if his mediatorial character had been the
subject of discourse. In drawing a _general_ conclusion from this
_particular_ statement, I only gave the Lecturer credit for
understanding the bearing of his own argument; for of course, all
reasoning _from the intrinsic force of an expression_ must be
co-extensive with the occurrence of that expression. If I have not
correctly explained Mr. Bates’s argument, it evades my apprehension
altogether.

---------------------

LECTURE VI.

THE SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION INCONSISTENT WITH ITSELF,

AND WITH THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF SALVATION.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

“NEITHER IS THERE SALVATION IN ANY OTHER; FOR THERE IS NONE OTHER NAME
UNDER HEAVEN GIVEN AMONG MEN, WHEREBY WE MUST BE SAVED.”—_Acts_ iv.
12.

The scene which we have this evening to visit and explore, is separated
from us by the space of eighteen centuries; yet of nothing on this earth
has Providence left, within the shadows of the past, so vivid and divine
an image. Gently rising above the mighty “field of the world,” Calvary’s
mournful hill appears, covered with silence now, but distinctly showing
the heavenly light that struggled there through the stormiest elements
of guilt. Nor need we only gaze, as on a motionless picture that closes
the vista of Christian ages. Permitting history to take us by the hand,
we may pace back in pilgrimage to the hour, till its groups stand around
us, and pass by us, and its voices of passion and of grief mock and wail
upon our ear. As we mingle with the crowd which, amid noise and dust,
follows the condemned prisoners to the place of execution, and fix our
eye on the faint and panting figure of one that bears his cross, could
we but whisper to the sleek priests close by, how might we startle them,
by telling them the future fate of this brief tragedy,—brief in act, in
blessing everlasting; that this Galilean convict shall be the world’s
confessed deliverer, while they that have brought him to this, shall be
the scorn and by-word of the nations; that that vile instrument of
torture, now so abject that it makes the dying slave more servile, shall
be made, by this victim and this hour, the symbol of whatever is holy
and sublime; the emblem of hope and love; pressed to the lips of ages;
consecrated by a veneration which makes the sceptre seem trivial as an
infant’s toy. Meanwhile the sacerdotal hypocrites, unconscious of the
part they play, watch to the end the public murder which they have
privately suborned; stealing a phrase from Scripture, that they may mock
with holy lips; and leaving to the plebeian soldiers the mutual jest and
brutal laugh, that serve to beguile the hired but hated work of agony,
and that draw forth from the sufferer that burst of forgiving prayer,
which sunk at least into their centurion’s heart. One there is, who
should have been spared the hearing of these scoffs; and perhaps she
heard them not; for before his nature was exhausted more, his eye
detects and his voice addresses her, and twines round her the filial arm
of that disciple who had been ever the most loving as well as most
beloved. She at least lost the religion of that hour in its humanity,
and beheld not the prophet but the son:—had not her own hands wrought
that seamless robe for which the soldiers’ lot is cast; and her own lips
taught him that strain of sacred poetry, “My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?” but never had she thought to hear it _thus_. As the cries
became fainter and fainter, scarcely do they reach Peter standing afar
off. The last notice of him had been the rebuking look that sent him to
weep bitterly; and now the voice that can alone tell him his
forgiveness, will soon be gone! Broken hardly less, though without
remorse, is the youthful John, to see that head, lately resting on his
bosom, drooping passively in death; and to hear the involuntary shriek
of Mary, as the spear struck upon the lifeless body, moving now only as
it is moved;—whence he alone, on whom she leaned, records the fact. Well
might the Galilean friends stand at a distance gazing; unable to depart,
yet not daring to approach; well might the multitudes that had cried
“crucify him” in the morning, shudder at the thought of that clamour ere
night; “beholding the things that had come to pass, they smote their
breasts and returned.”

This is the scene of which we have to seek the interpretation. Our first
natural impression is, that it requires no interpretation, but speaks
for itself; that it has no mystery, except that which belongs to the
triumphs of deep guilt, and the sanctities of disinterested love. To
raise our eye to that serene countenance, to listen to that submissive
voice, to note the subjects of its utterance, would give us no idea of
any mystic horror concealed behind the human features of the scene; of
any invisible contortions, as from the lash of demons, in the soul of
that holy victim; of any sympathetic connection of that cross with the
bottomless pit on the one hand, and the highest Heaven on the other; of
any moral revolution throughout our portion of the universe, of which
this public execution is but the outward signal. The historians drop no
hint that its sufferings, its affections, its relations, were more than
human,—raised indeed to distinction by miraculous accompaniments; but
intrinsically, however signally, human. They mention, as if bearing some
appreciable proportion to the whole series of incidents, particulars so
slight, as to vanish before any other than the obvious historical view
of the transaction; the thirst, the sponge, the rent clothes, the
mingled drink. They ascribe no sentiment to the crucified, except such
as might be expressed by one of like nature with ourselves, in the
consciousness of a finished work of duty, and a fidelity never broken
under the strain of heaviest trial. The narrative is clearly the
production of minds filled, not with theological anticipations, but with
historical recollections.

With this view of Christ’s death, which is such as might be entertained
by any of the primitive Churches, having one of the gospels only,
without any of the epistles, we are content. I conceive of it, then, as
manifesting the last degree of moral perfection in the Holy One of God;
and believe that in thus being an expression of character, it has its
primary and everlasting value. I conceive of it as the needful
preliminary to his resurrection and ascension, by which the severest
difficulties in the theory of Providence, life, and duty, are alleviated
or solved. I conceive of it as immediately procuring the universality
and spirituality of the Gospel; by dissolving those corporeal ties which
give nationality to Jesus, and making him, in his heavenly and immortal
form, the Messiah of humanity; blessing, sanctifying, regenerating, not
a people from the centre of Jerusalem, but a world from his station in
the Heavens. And these views, under unimportant modifications, I submit,
are the only ones of which Scripture contains a trace.

All this, however, we are assured, is the mere outside aspect of the
crucifixion; and wholly insignificant compared with the invisible
character and relations of the scene; which, localized only on earth,
has its chief effect in Hell; and though presenting itself among the
occurrences of time, is a repeal of the decretals of Eternity. The being
who hangs upon that cross is not man alone; but also the everlasting
God, who created and upholds all things, even the sun that now darkens
its face upon him, and the murderers who are waiting for his expiring
cry. The anguish he endures is not chiefly that which falls so
poignantly on the eye and ear of the spectator; the injured human
affections, the dreadful momentary doubt; the pulses of physical
torture, doubling on him with full and broken wave, till driven back by
the overwhelming power of love disinterested and divine. But he is
judicially abandoned by the Infinite Father; who expends on him the
immeasurable wrath due to an apostate race, gathers up into an hour the
lightnings of Eternity, and lets them loose upon that bended head. It is
the moment of retributive justice; the expiation of all human guilt;
that open brow hides beneath it the despair of millions of men; and to
the intensity of agony there, no human wail could give expression.
Meanwhile, the future brightens on the Elect; the tempests that hung
over their horizon are spent. The vengeance of the lawgiver having had
its way, the sunshine of a Father’s grace breaks forth, and lights up,
with hope and beauty, the earth, which had been a desert of despair and
sin. According to this theory, Christ, in his death, was a proper
expiatory sacrifice; he turned aside, by enduring it for them, the
infinite punishment of sin from all past or future believers in this
efficacy of the cross; and transferred to them the natural rewards of
his own righteousness. An acceptance of this doctrine is declared to be
the prime condition of the divine forgiveness; for no one who does not
_see_ the pardon, can _have_ it. And this pardon again, this clear score
for the past, is a necessary preliminary to all sanctification; to all
practical opening of a disinterested heart towards our Creator and man.
Pardon, and the perception of it, are the needful preludes to that
conforming love to God and men, which is the true Christian salvation.

The evidence in support of this theory is derived partly from natural
appearances, partly from scriptural announcements. Involving, as it
does, statements respecting the actual condition of human nature, and
the world in which we live, some appeal to experience, and to the
rational interpretation of life and Providence, is inevitable; and hence
certain propositions, affecting to be of a philosophical character, are
laid down as fundamental by the advocates of this system. Yet it is
admitted, that direct revelation only could have acquainted us, either
with our lost condition, or our vicarious recovery; and that all we can
expect to accomplish with nature, is to harmonize what we observe there,
with what we read in the written records of God’s will; so that the main
stress of the argument rests on the interpretation of Scripture. The
principles deduced from the nature of things, and laid down as a basis
for this doctrine, may be thus represented:

That man needs a Redeemer; having obviously fallen, by some disaster,
into a state of misery and guilt, from which the worst penal
consequences must be apprehended; and were it not for the probability of
such lapse from the condition in which it was fashioned, it would be
impossible to reconcile the phenomena of the world with the justice and
benevolence of its Creator.

That Deity only can redeem; since, to preserve veracity, the penalty of
sin must be inflicted; and the diversion only, not the annihilation, of
it, is possible. To let it fall on angels, would fail of the desired
end; because human sin, having been directed against an infinite Being,
has incurred an infinitude of punishment; which, on no created beings,
could be exhausted in any period short of eternity. Only a nature
strictly infinite can compress within itself, in the compass of an hour,
the woes distributed over the immortality of mankind. Hence, were God
personally One, like man, no redemption could be effected; for there
would be no Deity to suffer, except the very One who must punish. But
the triplicity of the Godhead relieves all difficulty; for, while one
Infinite inflicts, another Infinite endures; and resources are furnished
for the atonement.

Amid a great variety of forms in which the theory of atonement exists, I
have selected the foregoing; which, if I understand aright, is that
which is vindicated in the present controversy. I am not aware that I
have added anything to the language in which it is stated by its
powerful advocate, unless it be a few phrases, leaving its essential
meaning the same, but needful to render it compact and clear.

The scriptural evidence is found principally in certain of the
apostolical epistles; and this circumstance will render it necessary to
conduct a separate search into the historical writings of the New
Testament, that we may ascertain how they express the corresponding set
of ideas. Taking up successively these two branches of the subject, the
natural and the biblical, I propose to show, first, that this doctrine
is inconsistent with itself; secondly, that it is inconsistent with the
Christian idea of Salvation.

I. It is inconsistent with itself.

(1.) In its manner of treating the principles of natural religion.

Our faith in the infinite benevolence of God is represented as destitute
of adequate support from the testimony of nature.[295] It requires, we
are assured, the suppression of a mass of appearances, that would scare
it away in an instant, were it to venture into their presence; and is a
dream of sickly and effeminate minds, whose belief is the inward growth
of amiable sentimentality, rather than a genuine production from God’s
own facts. The appeal to the order and magnificence of creation, to the
structures and relations of the inorganic, the vegetable, the animal,
the spiritual forms, that fill the ascending ranks of this visible and
conscious universe;—to the arrangements which make it a blessing to be
born, far more than a suffering to die,—which enable us to extract the
relish of life from its toils, the affections of our nature from its
sufferings, the triumphs of goodness from its temptations;—to the
seeming plan of general progress, which elicits truth by the
self-destruction of error, and by the extinction of generations gives
perpetual rejuveniscence to the world; this appeal, which is another
name for the scheme of natural religion, is dismissed with scorn; and
sin and sorrow and death are flung in defiance across our path;—barriers
which we must remove, ere we can reach the presence of a benignant God.
Come with us, it is said, and listen to the wail of the sick infant;
look into the dingy haunts where poverty moans its life away; bend down
your ear to the accursed hum that strays from the busy hives of guilt;
spy into the hold of the slave-ship; from the factory follow the wasted
child to the gin-shop first, and then to the cellar called its home; or
look even at your own tempted and sin-bound souls, and your own
perishing race, snatched off into the dark by handfuls through the
activity of a destroying God; and tell us, did our benevolent Creator
make a creature and a world like this? A Calvinist who puts this
question is playing with fire. But I answer the question explicitly: all
these things we have met steadily and face to face; in full view of
them, we have taken up our faith in the goodness of God; and in full
view of them we will hold fast that faith. Nor is it just or true to
affirm, that our system hides these evils, or that our practice refuses
to grapple with them. And if you confess, that these ills of life would
be too much for your natural piety; if you declare, that these rugged
foundations and tempestuous elements of Providence would starve and
crush your confidence in God, while ours strikes its roots in the rock,
and throws out its branches to brave the storm, are you entitled to
taunt us with a faith of puny growth? Meanwhile, we willingly assent to
the principle which this appeal to evil is designed to establish; that,
with much apparent order, there is some apparent disorder in the
phenomena of the world; that from the latter, by itself, we should be
unable to infer any goodness and benevolence in God; and that were not
the former clearly the predominant result of natural laws, the character
of the Great Cause of all things would be involved in agonizing gloom.
The mass of physical and moral evil we do not profess fully to explain;
we think that in no system whatever is there any approach to an
explanation; and we are accustomed to touch on that dread subject with
the humility of filial trust, not with the confidence of dogmatic
elucidation.

Surely the fall of our first parents, I shall be reminded, gives the
requisite solution. The disaster which then befell the human race, has
changed the primeval constitution of things; introduced mortality, and
all the infirmities of which it is the result; introduced sin, and all
the seeds of vile affections which it compels us to inherit; introduced
also the penalties of sin, visible in part on this scene of life, and
developing themselves in another in anguish everlasting. Fresh from the
hand of his Creator, man was innocent, happy and holy; and he it is, not
God, who has deformed the world with guilt and grief.

Now, _as a statement of fact_, all this may or may not be true. Of this
I say nothing. But who does not see that, _as an explanation_, it is
inconsistent with itself, partial in its application, and leaves matters
incomparably worse than it found them? It is inconsistent with itself;
for Adam, perfectly pure and holy as he is reputed to have been, gave
the only proof that could exist of his being neither, by succumbing to
the first temptation that came in his way; and though finding no
enjoyment but in the contemplation of God, gave himself up to the first
advances of the devil. Never surely was a reputation for sanctity so
cheaply won. The canonizations of the Romish Calendar have been
curiously bestowed, on beings sufficiently remote from just ideas of
excellence; but, usually, there is _something_ to be affirmed of them,
legendary or otherwise, which, _if true_, might justify a momentary
admiration. But our first parent was not laid even under this necessity,
to obtain a glory greater than canonization; he had simply to do
nothing, except to fall, in order to be esteemed the most perfectly holy
of created minds. Most partial, too, is this theory in its application;
for disease and hardship, and death unmerited as the infant’s, afflict
the lower animal creation. Is this, too, the result of the fall? If so,
it is an _unredeemed_ effect; if not, it presses on the benevolence of
the Maker; and by the physical analogies which connect man with the
inferior creatures, force on us the impression, that his corporeal
sufferings have an original source not dissimilar from theirs. And
again, this explanation only serves to make matters worse than before.
For how puerile is it to suppose, that men will rest satisfied with
tracing back their ills to Adam, and refrain from asking, who was Adam’s
cause! And then comes upon us at once the ancient dilemma about evil;
was it mistake, or was it malignity, that created so poor a creature as
our progenitor, and staked on so precarious a will the blessedness of a
race and the well-being of a world? So far, this theory, falsely and
injuriously ascribed to Christianity, would leave us where we were: but
it carries us into deeper and gratuitous difficulties, of which natural
religion knows nothing, by appending eternal consequences to Adam’s
transgression; a large portion of which, after the most sanguine
extension of the efficacy of the atonement, must remain unredeemed. So
that if, under the eye of naturalism, the world, with its generations
dropping into the grave, must appear (as we heard it recently
described)[296] like the populous precincts of some castle, whose
governor called his servants, after a brief indulgence of liberty and
peace, into a dark and inscrutable dungeon, never to return or be seen
again: the only new feature which this theory introduces into the
prospect is this; that the interior of that cavernous prison-house is
disclosed; and while a few of the departed are seen to have emerged into
a fairer light, and to be traversing greener fields, and sharing a more
blessed liberty than they knew before, the vast multitude are discerned
in the gripe of everlasting chains, and the twist of unimaginable
torture. And all this infliction is a penal consequence of a first
ancestor’s transgression! Singular spectacle to be offered in
vindication of the character of God!

We are warned, however, not to start back from this representation, or
to indulge in any rash expression at the view which it gives of the
justice of the Most High; for that, beyond all doubt, parallel instances
occur in the operations of nature; and that if the system deduced from
Scripture accords with that which is in action in the creation, there
arises a strong presumption that both are from the same Author. The
arrangement which is the prime subject of objection in the foregoing
theory, _viz._, the vicarious transmission of consequences from acts of
vice and virtue, is said to be familiar to our observation as a _fact_;
and ought, therefore, to present no difficulties in the way of the
admission of a _doctrine_. Is it not obvious, for example, that the
guilt of a parent may entail disease and premature death on his child,
or even remoter descendants? And if it be consistent with the divine
perfections, that the innocent should suffer for others’ sins at the
distance of one generation, why not at the distance of a thousand? The
guiltless victim is not more completely severed from identity with Adam,
than he is from identity with his own father. My reply is brief: I admit
both the fact and the analogy; but the fact is of the exceptional kind,
from which, by itself, I could not infer the justice or the benevolence
of the Creator; and which, were it of large and prevalent amount, I
could not even reconcile with these perfections. If then you take it out
of the list of exceptions and difficulties, and erect it into a cardinal
rule, if you interpret by it the whole invisible portion of God’s
government, you turn the scale at once against the character of the
Supreme, and plant creation under a tyrant’s sway. And this is the fatal
principle pervading all analogical arguments in defence of Trinitarian
Christianity. No resemblances to the system can be found in the
universe, except in those anomalies and seeming deformities which
perplex the student of Providence, and which would undermine his faith,
were they not lost in the vast spectacle of beauty and of good. These
disorders are selected and spread out to view, as specimens of the
divine government of nature; the mysteries and horrors which offend us
in the popular theology are extended by their side; the comparison is
made, point by point, till the similitude is undeniably made out; and
when the argument is closed, it amounts to this: do you doubt whether
God could break mens’ limbs? You mistake his strength of character; only
see how he puts out their eyes! What kind of impression this reasoning
may have, seems to me doubtful even to agony. Both Trinitarian theology
and nature, it is triumphantly urged, must proceed from the same Author;
aye, but what sort of Author is that? You have led me in your quest
after analogies, through the great infirmary of God’s creation! and so
haunted am I by the sights and sounds of the lazar-house, that scarce
can I believe in anything but pestilence; so sick of soul have I become,
that the mountain breeze has lost its scent of health; and you say, it
is all the same in the other world, and wherever the same rule extends:
then I know my fate, that in this Universe Justice has no throne. And
thus, my friends, it comes to pass, that these reasoners often gain
indeed their victory; but it is known only to the Searcher of Hearts,
whether it is a victory against natural religion, or in favour of
revealed. For this reason, I consider the “Analogy” of Bishop Butler
(one of the profoundest of thinkers, and on purely moral subjects one of
the justest too,) as containing, with a design directly contrary, the
most terrible persuasives to Atheism that have ever been produced. The
essential error consists in selecting the difficulties,—which are the
rare, exceptional phenomena of nature,—as the basis of analogy and
argument. In the comprehensive and generous study of Providence, the
mind may, indeed, already have overcome the difficulties, and with the
lights recently gained from the harmony, design, and order of creation,
have made those shadows pass imperceptibly away; but when forced again
into their very centre, compelled to adopt them as a fixed station and
point of mental vision, they deepen round the heart again, and, instead
of illustrating anything, become solid darkness themselves.

I cannot quit this topic without observing, however, that there appears
to be nothing in nature and life, at all analogous to the vicarious
principle attributed to God in the Trinitarian scheme of redemption.
There is nowhere to be found any proper transfer or exchange, either of
the qualities, or of the consequences, of vice and virtue. The good and
evil acts of men do indeed affect others _as well_ as themselves; the
innocent suffer _with_ the guilty, as in the case before adduced, of a
child suffering in health by the excesses of a parent. But there is here
no endurance _for_ another, similar to Christ’s alleged endurance in the
place of men; the infliction on the child is not deducted from the
parent; it does nothing to lighten his load, or make it less than it
would have been, had he been without descendants; nor does any one
suppose his guilt alleviated by the existence of this innocent
fellow-sufferer. There is a nearer approach to analogy in those cases of
crime where the perpetrator seems to escape, and to leave the
consequences of his act to descend on others; as when the successful
cheat eludes pursuit, and from the stolen gains of neighbours constructs
a life of luxury for himself; or when a spendthrift government,
forgetful of its high trust, turning the professions of patriotism into
a lie, is permitted to run a prosperous career for one generation, and
is personally gone before the popular retribution falls, in the next, on
innocent successors. Here no doubt the harmless suffer _by_ the guilty,
in a certain sense _in the place of_ the guilty; but not in the sense
which the analogy requires. For there is still no substitution; the
distress of the unoffending party is not struck out of the offender’s
punishment; does not lessen, but rather aggravates his guilt; and
instead of fitting him for pardon, tempts the natural sentiments of
justice to follow him with severer condemnation. Nor does the scheme
receive any better illustration from the fact, that whoever attempts the
cure of misery must himself suffer; must have the shadows of ill cast
upon his spirit from every sadness he alleviates; and interpose himself
to stay the plague which, in a world diseased, threatens to pass to the
living from the dead. The parallel fails, because there is still no
transference: the appropriate sufferings of sin are not given to the
philanthropist; and the noble pains of goodness in him, the glorious
strife of his self-sacrifice, are no part of the penal consequences of
others’ guilt; they do not cancel one iota of those consequences, or
make the crimes which have demanded them, in any way, more ready for
forgiveness. Indeed, it is not in the good man’s _sufferings_,
considered as such, that any efficacy resides; but in his _efforts_,
which may be made with great sacrifice or without it, as the case may
be. Nor, at best, is there any proper annihilation of consequences at
all, accruing from his toils; the past acts of wrong which call up his
resisting energies, are irrevocable, the guilt incurred, the penalty
indestructible; the series of effects, foreign to the mind of the
perpetrator, may be abbreviated; prevention may be applied to new ills
which threaten to arise; but, by all this, the personal fitness of the
delinquent for forgiveness is wholly unaffected; the volition of sin has
gone forth; and on it, flies, as surely as sound on a vibration of the
air, the verdict of judgment.

Those who are affected by slight and failing analogies like these, would
do well to consider one, sufficiently obvious, which seems to throw
doubt upon their scheme. The atonement is thought to be, in respect to
all believers, a reversal of the fall: the effects of the fall are
partly visible and temporal, partly invisible and eternal; linked,
however, together as inseparable portions of the same penal system. Now
it is evident, that the supposed redemption on the cross has left
precisely where they were, all the _visible_ effects of the first
transgression: sorrow and toil are the lot of all, as they have been
from of old; the baptized infant utters a cry as sad as the unbaptized;
and between the holiness of the true believer and the worth of the
devout heretic, there is not discernible such a difference as there must
have been between Adam pure and perfect, and Adam lapsed and lost. And
is it presumptuous to reason from the seen to the unseen, from the part
which we experience to that which we can only conceive? If the known
effects are unredeemed, the suspicion is not unnatural, that so are the
unknown.

I sum up, then, this part of my subject by observing, that besides many
inconclusive appeals to nature, the advocates of the vicarious scheme
are chargeable with this fundamental inconsistency. They appear to deny
that the justice and benevolence of God can be reconciled with the
phenomena of nature; and say that the evidence must be helped out by
resort to their interpretation of scripture. When, having heard this
auxiliary system, we protest that it renders the case sadder than
before, they assure us that it is all benevolent and just, because it
has its parallel in creation. They renounce and adopt, in the same
breath, the religious appeal to the universe of God.

(2.) Another inconsistency appears, in the view which this theory gives
of the character of God.

It is assumed that, at the æra of creation, the Maker of mankind had
announced the infinite penalties which must follow the violation of his
law; and that their amount did not exceed the measure which his
abhorrence of wrong required. “And that which he saith, he would not be
God if he did not perform: that which he perceived right, he would be
unworthy of our trust, did he not fulfil. His veracity and justice,
therefore, were pledged to adhere to the word that had gone forth: and
excluded the possibility of any free and unconditional forgiveness.” Now
I would note in passing, that this announcement to Adam of an eternal
punishment impending over his first sin, is simply a fiction; for the
warning to him is stated thus; “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die;”[297] from which our progenitor must have been as
ingenious as a theologian, to extract the idea of endless life in Hell.
But to say no more of this, what notions of veracity have we here? When
a sentence is proclaimed against crime, is it indifferent to judicial
truth, _upon whom_ it falls? Personally addressed to the guilty, may it
descend without a lie upon the guiltless? Provided there is the
suffering, is it no matter _where_? Is this the sense in which God is no
respecter of persons? Oh! what deplorable reflection of human artifice
is this, that Heaven is too veracious to abandon its proclamation of
menace against transgressors; yet is content to vent it on goodness the
most perfect. No darker deed can be imagined, than is thus ascribed to
the Source of all perfection, under the insulted names of truth and
holiness. What reliance could we have on the faithfulness of such a
Being? If it be consistent with his nature to _punish_ by substitution,
what security is there that he will not _reward_ vicariously? All must
be loose and unsettled, the sentiments of reverence confused, the
perceptions of conscience indistinct, where the terms expressive of
those great moral qualities which render God himself most venerable, are
thus sported with and profaned.

The same extraordinary departure from all intelligible meaning of words
is apparent, when our charge of vindictiveness against the doctrine of
sacrifice is repelled as a slander. If the rigorous refusal of pardon,
till the whole penalty has been inflicted (when, indeed, it is no pardon
at all) be not vindictive, we may ask to be furnished with some better
definition. And though it is said, that God’s love was manifested to us
by the gift of his Son, this does but change the object on which this
quality is exercised, without removing the quality itself; putting _us_
indeed into the sunshine of his grace, but _the Saviour_ into the
tempest of his wrath. Did we desire to sketch the most dreadful form of
character, what more emphatic combination could we invent than this;
rigour in the exaction of penal suffering; and indifference as to the
person on whom it falls?

But in truth this system, in its delineations of the Great Ruler of
creation, bids defiance to all the analogies by which Christ and the
Christian heart have delighted to illustrate his nature. A God who could
accept the spontaneously returning sinner, and restore him by corrective
discipline, is pronounced not worth serving, and an object of
contempt.[298] If so, Jesus sketched an object of contempt when he drew
the father of the prodigal son, opening his arms to the poor penitent,
and needing only the sight of his misery to fall on his neck with the
kiss of welcome home. Let the assertions be true, that sacrifice and
satisfaction are needful preliminaries to pardon, that to pay any
attention to repentance without these is mere weakness, and that it is a
perilous deception to teach the doctrine of mercy apart from the
atonement; and this parable of our Saviour’s becomes the most pernicious
instrument of delusion; a statement, absolute and unqualified, of a
feeble and sentimental heresy. Who does not see what follows from this
scornful exclusion of corrective punishment? Suppose the infliction not
to be corrective, that is, not to be designed for any good, what then
remains as the cause of the Divine retribution? The sense of insult
offered to a law. And thus we are virtually told, that God must be
regarded with a mixture of contempt, unless he be susceptible of
personal affront.[299]

(3.) The last inconsistency with itself which I shall point out in this
doctrine, will be found in the view which it gives of the work of
Christ. Sin, we are assured, is necessarily infinite. Its infinitude
arises from its reference to an Infinite Being; and involves as a
consequence the necessity of redemption by Deity himself.

The position, that guilt be estimated not by its amount or its motive,
but by the dignity of the being against whom it is directed, is
illustrated by the case of an insubordinate soldier, whose punishment is
increased, according as his rebellion assails an equal, or any of the
many grades amongst his superiors. It is evident, however, that it is
not the dignity of the person, but the magnitude of the effect, which
determines the severity of the sanction by which, in such an instance,
law enforces order. Insult to a monarch is more sternly treated than
injury to a subject, because it incurs the risk of wider and more
disastrous consequences, and superadds to the personal injury a peril to
an official power which, not resting on individual superiority, but on
conventional arrangement, is always precarious. It is not indeed easy to
form a distinct notion of an infinite act in a finite agent; and still
less is it easy to evade the inference, that if an immoral deed against
God be an infinite demerit, a moral deed towards him must be an infinite
merit.

Passing by an assertion so unmeaning, and conceding it for the sake of
progress in our argument, I would inquire what is intended by that other
statement, that only Deity can redeem, and that by Deity the sacrifice
was made? The union of the divine and human natures in Christ is said to
have made his sufferings meritorious in an infinite degree. Yet we are
repeatedly assured, that it was in his manhood only that he endured and
died. If the divine nature in our Lord had a joint consciousness with
the human, then did God suffer and perish; if not, then did the man only
die, Deity being no more affected by his anguish, than by that of the
malefactors on either side. In the one case the perfections of God, in
the other the reality of the atonement, must be relinquished. No doubt,
the popular belief is, that the Creator literally expired; the hymns in
common use declare it; the language of pulpits sanctions it; the
consistency of creeds requires it; but professed theologians repudiate
the idea with indignation. Yet by silence or ambiguous speech, they
encourage, in those whom they are bound to enlighten, this degrading
humanization of Deity; which renders it impossible for common minds to
avoid ascribing to him emotions and infirmities, totally irreconcileable
with the serene perfections of the Universal Mind. In his influence on
the worshipper, _He_ is no Spirit, who can be invoked by his agony and
bloody sweat, his cross and passion. And the piety that is thus taught
to bring its incense, however sincere, before the mental image of a
being with convulsed features and expiring cry, has little left of that
which makes Christian devotion characteristically venerable.

II. I proceed to notice the inconsistency of the doctrine under review
with the Christian idea of salvation.

There is one _significant scriptural fact_, which suggests to us the
best mode of treating this part of our subject. It is this; that the
language supposed to teach the atoning efficacy of the cross, does not
appear in the New Testament till the Gentile controversy commences, nor
ever occurs apart from the treatment of that subject, under some of its
relations. The cause of this phenomenon will presently appear; meanwhile
I state it, in the place of an assertion sometimes incorrectly made,
viz., that the phraseology in question is confined to the epistles. Even
this mechanical limitation of sacrificial passages is indeed nearly
true, as not above three or four have strayed beyond the epistolary
boundary, into the Gospels and the book of Acts: but the restriction in
respect of subject, which I have stated, will be found, I believe, to be
absolutely exact, and to furnish the real interpretation to the whole
system of language.

(1.) Let us then first test the vicarious scheme by reference to the
sentiments of Scripture generally, and of our Lord and his apostles
especially, where this controversy is out of the way. Are their ideas
respecting human character, the forgiveness of sins, the terms of
everlasting life, accordant with the cardinal notions of a believer in
the atonement? Do they, or do they not, insist on the necessity of a
sacrifice for human sin, as a preliminary to pardon, to sanctification,
to the love of God? Do they, or do they not, direct a marked and almost
exclusive attention to the cross, as the object to which, far more than
to the life and resurrection of our Lord, all faithful eyes should be
directed?

(a.) Now to the fundamental assertion of the vicarious system, that the
Deity cannot, without inconsistency and imperfection, pardon on simple
repentance, the whole tenor of the Bible is one protracted and
unequivocal contradiction. So copious is its testimony on this head,
that if the passages containing it were removed, scarcely a shred of
Scripture relating to the subject would remain. “Pardon, I beseech
thee,” said Moses, pleading for the Israelites, “the iniquity of this
people, according to the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast
forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now; and the Lord said, _I
have pardoned according to thy word_.”[300] Will it be affirmed, that
this chosen people had their eyes perpetually fixed in faith on the
great propitiation, which was to close their dispensation, and of which
their own ceremonial was a type?—that whenever penitence and pardon are
named amongst them, this reference is implied, and that as this faith
was called to mind and expressed in the shedding of blood at the altar,
such sacrificial offerings take the place, in Judaism, of the atoning
trust in Christianity? Well then, let us quit the chosen nation
altogether, and go to a heathen people, who were aliens to their laws,
their blood, their hopes, and their religion; to whom no sacrifice was
appointed, and no Messiah promised. If we can discover the dealings of
God with such a people, the case, I presume, must be deemed conclusive.
Hear then, what happened on the banks of the Tigris. “Jonah began to
enter into the city,” (Nineveh,) “and he cried and said, yet forty days
and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God,
and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them
even unto the least of them.” “Who can tell,” (said the decree of the
king ordaining the fast), “if God will turn and repent, and turn away
from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that
they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he
had said he would do unto them; and he did it not.”[301] And when the
prophet was offended, first at this clemency to Nineveh, and afterwards
that the canker was sent to destroy his own favourite plant, beneath
whose shadow he sat, what did Jehovah say? “Thou hast had pity on the
gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which
came up in a night and perished in a night; and should not I spare
Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand
persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left
hand?”[302] —and who are not likely, one would think, to have discerned
the future merits of the Redeemer.

In truth, if even the Israelites had any such prospective views to
Calvary, if their sacrifices conveyed the idea of the cross erected
there, and were established for this purpose, the fact must have been
privately revealed to modern theologians; for not a trace of it can be
found in the Hebrew writings. It must be thought strange, that a
prophetic reference so habitual, should be always a secret reference;
that a faith so fundamental should be so mysteriously suppressed; that
the uppermost idea of a nation’s mind should never have found its way to
lips or pen. “But if it were not so,” we are reminded, “if the Jewish
ritual prefigured nothing ulterior, it was revolting, trifling, savage;
its worship a butchery, and the temple courts no better than a slaughter
house.” And were they not equally so, though the theory of types be
true? If neither priest nor people could _see at the time_ the very
thing which the ceremonial was constructed to reveal, what advantage is
it that divines can see it _now_? And even if the notion was conveyed to
the Jewish mind, (which the whole history shows not to have been the
fact,) was it necessary that hecatombs should be slain, age after age,
to intimate obscurely an idea, which one brief sentence might have
lucidly expressed? The idea, however, it is evident, slipped through
after all; for when Messiah actually came, the one great thing which the
Jews did _not_ know and believe about him was, that he could die at all.
So much for the preparatory discipline of fifteen centuries!

There is no reason then why anything should be supplied in our thoughts,
to alter the plain meaning of the announcements of prophets and holy
men, of God’s unconditional forgiveness on repentance. “Thou desirest
not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt
offering; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a
contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[303] “Wash you, make you
clean,” says the prophet Isaiah in the name of the Lord; “put away the
evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do
well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead
for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord;
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”[304] Once more, “When I say
unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do
that which is lawful and right; if the wicked restore the pledge, give
again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life without
committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die.”[305] Nor
are the teachings of the Gospel at all less explicit. Our Lord treats
largely and expressly on the doctrine of forgiveness in several
parables, and especially that of the prodigal son; and omits all
allusion to the propitiation for the past. He furnishes an express
definition of the terms of eternal life; “Good master, what good thing
shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, why
callest thou me good; there is none good save one, that is God; but if
thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” And Jesus adds, “if
thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”[306] This
silence on the prime condition of pardon cannot be explained by the
fact, that the crucifixion had not yet taken place, and could not safely
be alluded to, before the course of events had brought it into prominent
notice. For we have the preaching of the Apostles, after the ascension,
recorded at great length, and under very various circumstances, in the
book of Acts. We have the very “words whereby,” according to the
testimony of an angel, “Cornelius and all his house shall be saved;”
these, one would think, would be worth hearing in this cause: “God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power; who went
about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for
God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both
in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a
tree; him God raised up the third day, and showed openly; not to all the
people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat
and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to
preach unto the people, and to testify, that it is he who was ordained
of God to be the judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets
witness, that, through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall
receive remission of sins.”[307] Did an Evangelical missionary dare to
preach in this style now, he would be immediately disowned by his
employers, and dismissed as a disguised Socinian, who kept back all the
“peculiar doctrines of the Gospel.”

(b.) The emphatic mention of the resurrection by the apostle Peter in
this address, is only a particular instance of a system which pervades
the whole preaching of the first missionaries of Christ. _This_, and not
the cross, with its supposed effects, is the grand object to which they
call the attention and the faith of their hearers. I cannot quote to you
the whole book of Acts; but every reader knows, that “Jesus and the
resurrection” constitutes the leading theme, the central combination of
ideas in all its discourses. This truth was shed, from Peter’s tongue of
fire, on the multitudes that heard amazed the inspiration of the day of
Pentecost.[308] Again, it was his text, when passing beneath the
beautiful gate, he made the cripple leap for joy; and then, with the
flush of this deed still fresh upon him, leaned against a pillar in
Solomon’s porch, and spake in explanation to the awe-struck people,
thronging in at the hour of prayer.[309] Before priests and rulers,
before Sanhedrim and populace, the same tale is told again, to the utter
exclusion, be it observed, of the essential doctrine of the cross.[310]
The authorities of the temple, we are told, were galled and terrified at
the apostle’s preaching; “naturally enough,” it will be said, “since,
the real sacrifice having been offered, their vocation, which was to
make the prefatory and typical oblation, was threatened with
destruction.” But no, this is not the reason given: “They were grieved
because they preached, through Jesus, the resurrection from the
dead.”[311] Paul, too, while his preaching was spontaneous and free, and
until he had to argue certain controversies which have long ago become
obselete, manifested a no less remarkable predilection for this topic.
Before Felix, he declares what was the grand indictment of his
countrymen against him; “touching the resurrection of the dead, I am
called in question of you this day.”[312] Follow him far away from his
own land; and, with foreigners, he harps upon the same subject, as if he
were a man of one idea; which, indeed, according to our opponents’
scheme, he ought to have been, only it should have been _another idea_.
Seldom, however, can we meet with a more exuberant mind than Paul’s; yet
the resurrection obviously haunts him wherever he goes: in the synagogue
of Antioch, you hear him dwelling on it with all the energy of his
inspiration;[313] and, at Athens, it was this on which the scepticism of
Epicureans and Stoics fastened for a scoff.[314] In his epistles, too,
where he enlarges so much on justification by faith, when we inquire
what precisely is this faith, and what the object it is to contemplate
and embrace, this remarkable fact presents itself: that the one only
important thing respecting Christ, which is _never once_ mentioned as
the object of justifying faith is _his death, and blood, and cross_.
“Faith” by itself, the “faith of Jesus Christ,” “faith of the Gospel,”
“faith of the Son of God,” are expressions of constant occurrence; and
wherever this general description is replaced by a more specific account
of this justifying state of mind, it is _faith in the resurrection_ on
which attention is fastened. “It is Christ that died, _yea rather, that
is risen again_.”[315] “He was delivered for our offences, and _raised
again for our justification_.”[316] “Faith shall be imputed to us for
righteousness, if we believe on _him that raised up Jesus our Lord from
the dead_.”[317] Hear too, the Apostle’s definition of saving faith: “If
thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in
thy heart _that God hath raised him from the dead_, thou shalt be
saved.”[318] The only instance, in which the writings of St. Paul appear
to associate the word faith with the death of Christ, is the following
text: “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his
blood;”[319] and in this case the Apostle’s meaning would, I conceive,
be more faithfully given by destroying this conjunction, and disposing
the words thus: “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation by his
blood, through faith.” The idea of his _blood_, or _death_, belongs to
the word ‘propitiation,’ not to the word ‘faith.’ To this translation no
Trinitarian scholar, I am persuaded, can object;[320] and when the true
meaning of the writer’s sacrificial language is explained, the
distinction will appear to be not unimportant. At present I am concerned
only with the defence of my position, that the death of Christ is never
mentioned as the object of saving faith; but that his resurrection
unquestionably is. This phenomenon in Scripture phraseology is so
extraordinary, so utterly repugnant to everything which a hearer of
orthodox preaching would expect, that I hardly expect my affirmation of
it to be believed. The two ideas of _faith_, and of our _Lord’s death_,
are so naturally and perpetually united in the mind of every believer in
the atonement, that it must appear to him incredible, that they should
never fall together in the writings of the Apostles. However, I have
stated my fact; and it is for you to bring it to the test of Scripture.

(c.) Independently of all written testimony, moral reasons, we are
assured, exist, which render an absolute remission for the past
essential to a regenerated life for the future. Our human nature is said
to be so constituted, that the burden of sin, on the conscience once
awakened, is intolerable: our spirit cries aloud for mercy; yet is so
straitened by the bands of sin, so conscious of the sad alliance
lingering still, so full of hesitancy and shame when seeking the relief
of prayer, so blinded by its tears when scanning the heavens for an
opening of light and hope, that there is no freedom, no unrestrained and
happy love to God; but a pinched and anxious mind, bereft of power,
striving to work with bandaged or paralytic will, instead of trusting
itself to loosened and self-oblivious affections. Hence it is thought,
that the sin of the past must be cancelled, before the holiness of the
future can be commenced; that it is a false order to represent
repentance as leading to pardon; because to be forgiven is the
pre-requisite to love. We cannot forget, however, how distinctly and
emphatically he who, after God, best knew what is in man, has
contradicted this sentiment; for when that sinful woman, whose presence
in the house shocked the sanctimonious Pharisee, stood at his feet as he
reclined, washing them with her tears, and kissing them with reverential
lips; Jesus turned to her and said, “her sins, which are many, are
forgiven; _for_ she loved much.”[321] From him, then, we learn what our
own hearts would almost teach, that love may be the prelude to
forgiveness, as well as forgiveness the preparative for love.

At the same time let me acknowledge, that this statement respecting the
moral effects of conscious pardon, to which I have invoked Jesus to
reply, is by no means an unmixed error. It touches upon a very profound
and important truth; and I can never bring myself to regard that
assurance of divine forgiveness, which the doctrine of atonement
imparts, as a demoralizing state of mind, encouraging laxity of
conscience and a continuance in sin. The sense of pardon doubtless
reaches the secret springs of gratitude, presents the soul with an
object, strange before, of new and divine affection; and binds the child
of redemption, by all generous and filial obligations, to serve with
free and willing heart the God who hath gone forth to meet him. That the
motives of self-interest are diminished in such a case, is a trifle that
need occasion small anxiety. For the human heart is no labourer for
hire; and, where there is opportunity afforded for true and noble love,
will thrust away the proffered wages, and toil rather in a free and
thankful spirit. If we are to compare, as a source of duty, the grateful
with the merely prudential temper, rather may we trust the first, as not
the worthier only, but the stronger too; and till we obtain emancipation
from the latter,—forget the computations of hope and fear, and
precipitate ourselves for better for worse on some object of divine love
and trust,—our nature will be puny and weak, our wills will turn in
sickness from their duty, and our affections shrink in aversion from
their heaven. But though personal gratitude is better than prudence,
there is a higher service still. A more disinterested love may spring
from the contemplation of what God is in himself, than from the
recollection of what he has done for us; and when this mingles most
largely as an element among our springs of action; when, humbled indeed
by a knowledge of dangers that await us, and thankful, too, for the
blessings spread around us, we yet desire chiefly to be fitting children
of the everlasting Father and the holy God; when we venerate him for the
graciousness and purity and majesty of his spirit, impersonated in
Jesus; and resolve to serve him truly, _before_ he has granted the
desire of our heart, and because he is of a nature so sublime and
merciful and good; then are we in the condition of her who bent over the
feet of Christ; and we are forgiven, because we have loved much.

(2.) Let us now, in conclusion, turn our attention to those portions of
the New Testament, which speak of the death of Christ as the means of
redemption.

I have said, that these are to be found exclusively in passages of the
sacred writings which treat of the Gentile controversy, or of topics
immediately connected with it. This controversy arose naturally out of
the design of Providence to make the narrow, exclusive, ceremonial
system of Judaism, give birth to the universal and spiritual religion of
the Gospel; from God’s method of expanding the Hebrew Messiah into the
Saviour of humanity. For this the nation was not prepared; to this even
the Hebrew Christians could not easily conform their faith; and in the
achievement of this, or in persuading the world that it was achieved,
did Paul spend his noble life, and write his astonishing epistles. The
Jews knew that the Deliverer was to be of their peculiar stock, and
their royal lineage; they believed that he would gather upon himself all
the singularities of their race, and be a Hebrew to intensity; that he
would literally restore the kingdom to Israel; aye, and extend it too,
immeasurably beyond the bounds of its former greatness; till, in fact,
it swallowed up all existing principalities and powers, and thrones, and
dominions, and became co-extensive with the earth. Then in Jerusalem, as
the centre of the vanquished nations,—before the temple, as the altar of
a humbled world, did they expect the Messiah to erect his throne; and
when he had taken the seat of judgment, to summon all the tribes before
his tribunal, and pass on the Gentiles, excepting the few who might
submit to the law, a sentence of perpetual exclusion from his realm;
while his own people would be invited to the seats of honour, occupy the
place of authority and sit down with him (the greatest at his right hand
and his left) at his table in his kingdom. The holy men of old were to
come on earth again to see this day. And many thought that every part of
the realm thus constituted, and all its inhabitants, would never die:
but like the Messiah himself, and the patriarchs whom he was to call to
life, would be invested with immortality. None were to be admitted to
these golden days except themselves; all else to be left in outer
darkness from this region of light, and there to perish and be seen no
more. The grand title to admission was conformity with the Mosaic law;
the most ritually scrupulous were the most secure; and the careless
Israelite, who forgot or omitted an offering, a tithe, a Sabbath duty,
might incur the penalty of exclusion and death: the law prescribed such
mortal punishment for the smallest offence; and no one, therefore, could
feel himself ready with his claim, if he had not yielded a perfect
obedience. If God were to admit him on any other plea, it would be of
pure grace and goodness, and not in fulfilment of any promise.

The Jews, being scattered over the civilized world, and having
synagogues in every city, came into perpetual contact with other people.
Nor was it possible that the Gentiles, among whom they lived, should
notice the singular purity and simplicity of the Israelitish Theism,
without some of them being struck with its spirit, attracted by its
sublime principles, and disposed to place themselves in religious
relations with that singular people. Having been led into admiration and
even profession of the nation’s theology, they could not but desire to
share their hopes; which indeed were an integral part of their religion,
and, at the Christian era, the one element in it to which they were most
passionately attached. But this was a stretch of charity too great for
any Hebrew; or, at all events, if such admission were ever to be thought
of, it must only be on condition of absolute submission to the
requirements of the law. The Gentile would naturally plead, that as God
had not made him of the chosen nation, he had given him no law, except
that of conscience; that, being without the law, he must be a law unto
himself; and that if he had lived according to his light, he could not
be justly excluded on the ground of accidental disqualification.
Possibly, in the provocation of dispute, the Gentile might sometimes
become froward and insolent in his assertion of claim; and, in the pride
of his heart, demand as a right that which, at most, could only be
humbly hoped for as a privilege and a free gift.

Thus were the parties mutually placed to whom the Deliverer came. Thus
dense and complicated was the web of prejudice which clung round the
early steps of the Gospel; and which must be burst or disentangled ere
the glad tidings could have free course and be glorified. How did
Providence develop from such elements the divine and everlasting truth?
Not by neglecting them, and speaking to mankind as if they had no such
ideas; not by forbidding his messengers and teachers to have any
patience with them; but, on the contrary, by using these very notions as
temporary means to his everlasting ends; by touching this and that with
light before the eyes of apostles, as if to say, there are good
capabilities in these; the truth may be educed from them so gently and
so wisely, that the world will find itself in light, without perceiving
how it has been quitting the darkness.

So long as Christ remained on earth, he necessarily confined his
ministry to his nation. He would not have been the Messiah had he done
otherwise. By birth, by lineage, by locality, by habit, he was
altogether theirs. Whoever then, of his own people, during his mortal
life, believed in him and followed him, became a subject of the Messiah;
ready, it was supposed even by the apostles themselves, to enter the
glory of his kingdom, whenever it should please him to assume it;
qualified at once, by the combination of pedigree and of belief, to
enter into life, to become a member of the kingdom of God, to take a
place among the elect; for, by all these phrases, was described the
admission to the expected realm. If, then, Jesus had never suffered and
died, if he had never retired from this world, but stayed to fulfil the
anticipations of his first followers, his Messianic kingdom might have
included all the converts of the Israelitish stock. From the exclusion
which fell on others, they would have obtained salvation. Hence, it is
never in connection with the first Jewish Christians that the _death of
Christ_ is mentioned.

It was otherwise, however, with the Gentiles. They could not become his
followers in his mortal lifetime; and had a Messianic reign _then_ been
set up, they must have been excluded; no missionary would have been
justified in addressing them with invitation; they could not, as it was
said, have entered into life. The Messiah must cease to be Jewish,
before he could become universal; and this implied his death by which
alone the personal relations, which made him the property of a nation,
could be annihilated. To this he submitted; he disrobed himself of his
corporeality, he became an immortal spirit; thereby instantly burst his
religion open to the dimensions of the world; and, as he ascended to the
skies, sent it forth to scatter the seeds of blessing over the field of
the world, long ploughed with cares, and moist with griefs, and softened
now to nourish in its bosom the tree of Life.

Now, how would the effect of this great revolution be described to the
proselyte Gentiles, so long vainly praying for admission to the
Israelitish hope. At once it destroyed their exclusion; put away as
valueless the Jewish claims of circumcision and law; nailed the
hand-writing of ordinances to the cross; reconciled them that had been
afar off; redeemed them to God by his blood, out of every tongue, and
kindred, and people, and nation; washed them in his blood; justified
them _by his resurrection and ascension_; an expression, I would remark,
unmeaning on any other explanation.

Even during our Lord’s personal ministry, his approaching death is
mentioned, as the means of introducing the Gentiles into his Messianic
kingdom. He adverts repeatedly to his cross, as designed to widen, by
their admission, the extent of his sway: and according to Scripture
phrase, to yield to him “much fruit.” He was already on his last fatal
visit to Jerusalem, when, taking the hint from _the visit of some Greeks
to him_, he exclaimed: “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be
glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but _if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit_.” He adds, in allusion to the death he should die;
“and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all men unto
me_.”[322] It is for this end that he resigns for awhile his life,—that
he may bring in the wanderers who are not of the commonwealth of Israel:
“Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring,
and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one
shepherd: _therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my
life_, that I may take it again.”[323] Many a parable did Jesus utter,
proclaiming his Father’s intended mercy to the uncovenanted nations: but
for himself personally he declared, “I am not sent, but to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel.”[324] His advent was a promise of _their_
economy; his office, the traditionary hope of their fathers; his birth,
his life, his person, were under the Law, and excluded him from
relations to those who were beyond its obligations. On the cross, all
the connate peculiarities of the Nazarene ceased to exist: when, the
seal of the sepulchre gave way, the seal of the law was broken too; the
nationality of his person passed away; for how can an immortal be a Jew?
This then was the time to open wide the scope of his mission, and to
invite to God’s acceptance those that fear him in every nation. Though,
before, the disciple might “have known Christ after the flesh,” and
followed his steps as the Hebrew Messiah, “yet now henceforth was he to
know him so no more;” these “old things had passed away,” since he had
“died for all,”—died to become universal,—to drop all exclusive
relations, and “reconcile the world,” the Gentile world, to God.[325]
Observe to whom this “ministry of reconciliation” is especially
confided. As if to show that it is exclusively _the risen Christ_ who
belongs to all men, and that his death was the instrument of the
Gentiles’ admission, their great Apostle was one Paul, who had not known
the Saviour in his mortal life; who never listened to his voice, till it
spake from heaven; who himself was the convert of his ascension; and
bore to him the relation, not of subject to the person of a Hebrew king,
but of spirit to spirit, unembarrassed by anything earthly, legal, or
historical. Well did Paul understand the freedom and the sanctity of
this relation; and around the idea of the Heavenly Messiah gathered all
his conceptions of the spirituality of the gospel, of its power over the
unconscious affections, rather than a reluctant will. His believing
countrymen were afraid to disregard the observances of the law, lest it
should be a disloyalty to God, and disqualify them for the Messiah’s
welcome, when he came to take his power and reign. Paul tells them, that
while their Lord remained in this mortal state, they were right; as
representative of the law, and filling an office created by the religion
of Judaism, he could not but have held them _then_ to its obligations;
nor could they, without infidelity, have neglected its claims, any more
than a wife can innocently separate herself from a living husband. But
as the death of the man sets the woman free, and makes null the law of
their union, so the decease of Christ’s body emancipates his followers
from all legal relations to him; and they are at liberty to wed
themselves anew to the risen Christ, who dwells where no ordinance is
needful, no tie permitted but of the spirit, and all are as the angels
of God.[326] Surely, then, this mode of conception explains, why the
death of Jesus constitutes a great date in the Christian economy,
especially as expounded by the friend and apostle of those who were not
“Jews by nature, but sinners of the Gentiles.”[327] Had he never died,
they must have remained aliens from his sway; the enemies against whom
his power must be directed; without hope in the day of his might;
strangers to God and his vicegerent.

But, while thus they “were yet without strength, Christ died for” these
“ungodly;”[328] died to put himself into connection with them, else
impossible; and rising from death drew them after him into spiritual
existence on earth, analogous to that which he passed in heaven. “You,”
says their Apostle, “being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of
your flesh, hath he quickened together with him;” giving you, as “risen
with him,” a life above the world and its law of exclusion,—a life not
“subject to ordinances,” but of secret love and heavenly faith, “hid
with Christ in God;” “blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances that
was against us, which was contrary to us, and taking it out of the way,
nailing it to his cross.”[329] God had never intended to perpetuate the
division between Israel and the world, receiving the one as the sons,
and shutting out the other as the slaves of his household. If there had
been an appearance of such partiality, he had always designed to set
these bondmen free, and to make them “heirs of God through Christ;”[330]
“in whom they had redemption through his blood” from their servile
state, the forgiveness of disqualifying sins, according to the riches of
his grace.[331] Though the Hebrews boasted that “theirs was the
adoption,”[332] and till Messiah’s death had boasted truly; yet in that
event, God “before the foundation of the world,” had “blessed us”
(Gentiles) “with all spiritual blessings, in heavenly places;” “having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ,
according” (not indeed to any right or promise, but) “to the good
pleasure of his will,”[333] “and when we were enemies, having reconciled
us, by the death of his son;”[334] “that in the fulness of times he
might gather together in one _all things_ in Christ;”[335] “by whom we”
(Gentiles) “have now received this atonement” (reconciliation);[336]
that he might have no partial empire, but that “in him might all fulness
dwell.”[337] “Wherefore,” says their Apostle, “remember that ye,
_Gentiles in the flesh_, were in time past without Messiah, being aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of
promise, having no hope, and without God in the world; but now in Christ
Jesus, ye, who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of
Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken
down the middle wall of partition between us” (not between God and man,
but between Jew and Gentile); “having abolished in his flesh the enmity,
even the law of commandments, contained in ordinances; for to make in
himself, of twain, one new man, so _making peace_; and that he might
reconcile both unto God, in one body, by the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby; and came and preached peace to you who were afar off, as
well as to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by
one spirit unto the Father.”[338]

The way, then, is clear and intelligible, in which the death and
ascension of the Messiah rendered him universal, by giving spirituality
to his rule; and, on the simple condition of faith, added the
uncovenanted nations to his dominion, so far as they were willing to
receive him. This idea, and this only, will be found in almost every
passage of the New Testament (excepting the Epistle to the Hebrews)
usually adduced to prove the doctrine of the Atonement. Some of the
strongest of these I have already quoted; and my readers must judge
whether they have received a satisfactory meaning. There are others, in
which the Gentiles are not so distinctly stated to be the sole objects
of the redemption of the cross: but with scarcely an exception, so far
as I can discover, this limitation is implied; and either creeps out
through some adjacent expression in the context; or betrays itself, when
we recur to the general course of the Apostle’s argument, or to the
character and circumstances of his correspondents. Thus Paul says, that
Christ “gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time;” the
next verse shows what is in his mind, when he adds, “_whereunto_ I am
ordained a preacher, and an apostle, a teacher of THE GENTILES in faith
and verity:” and the whole sentiment of the context is the _Universality
of the Gospel_, and the duty of praying for Gentile kings and people, as
not abandoned to a foreign God and another Mediator; for since Messiah’s
death, to _us all_ “there is but One God, and One Mediator between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus:” wherefore the Apostle wills, that _for
all_, “men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath, and
doubting,”—without wrath at their admission, or doubt of their
adoption.[339] And wherever emphasis is laid on the _vast number_
benefited by the cross, a contrast is implied with the _few_ (only the
Jews) who could have been his subjects, had he not died: and when it is
said, “he gave his life a ransom _for many_;”[340] his blood was “shed
_for many_, for the remission of sins;”[341] “thou wast slain, and hast
redeemed us by thy blood, _out of every kindred, and tongue, and people,
and nation_; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we
shall reign on the earth;”[342] “behold the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of _the world_;”[343] —by all these expressions is still denoted
the efficacy of Christ’s death in removing the Gentile disqualification,
and making his dispensation spiritual as his celestial existence, and
universal as the Fatherhood of God. Does Paul exhort certain of his
disciples, “to feed the church of the Lord, which he hath purchased with
his own blood?”[344] We find that he is speaking of the _Gentile_ church
of Ephesus, whose elders he is instructing in the management of their
charge, and to which he afterwards wrote the well-known epistle, on
their Gentile freedom and adoption obtained by the Messiah’s death. When
Peter says, “ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things,
as silver and gold, from your vain conversation, received by tradition
from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot,”[345] we must inquire _to whom_ he is
addressing these words. If it be to the Jews, the interpretation which I
have hitherto given of such language will not apply, and we must seek an
explanation altogether different. But the whole manner of this epistle,
the complexion of its phraseology throughout, convinces me that it was
addressed especially to the _Gentile converts_ of Asia Minor; and that
the redemption of which it speaks is no other than that which is the
frequent theme of their own apostle.

In the passage just quoted, the form of expression itself suggests the
idea, that Peter is addressing a class which did not include himself;
“YE were not redeemed, &c.:” further on in the same epistle the same
sentiment occurs, however, without any such visible restriction.
Exhorting to patient suffering for conscience sake, he appeals to the
example of Christ; “who, when he suffered, threatened not, but committed
himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who, his own self, bare _our_
sins in his own body on the tree; that we, being dead to sin, should
live unto righteousness:” yet, with instant change in the expression,
revealing his correspondents to us, the Apostle adds, “by whose stripes
YE were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned
unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls.”[346] With the instinct of a
gentle and generous heart, the writer, treating in plain terms of the
former sins of those whom he addresses, puts himself in with them; and
avoids every appearance of that spiritual pride, by which the Jew
constantly rendered himself offensive to the Gentile.

Again, in this letter, he recommends the duty of patient endurance, by
appeal to the same consideration of Christ’s disinterested
self-sacrifice. “It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer
for well doing than for evil doing: for Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” And
who are these “unjust” that are thus brought to God? The Apostle
instantly explains, by describing how the “Jews by nature” lost
possession of Messiah by the death of his person, and “sinners of the
Gentiles” gained him by the resurrection of his immortal nature; “being
put to death in flesh, but quickened in spirit; and _thereby he went and
preached unto the spirits in prison, who formerly were without faith_.”
This is clearly a description of the Heathen world, ere it was brought
into relation to the Messianic promises. Still further confirmation,
however, follows. The Apostle adds: “forasmuch, then, as Christ hath
suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same
mind; for the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the
will _of the Gentiles_; when _we_ walked in lasciviousness, lusts,
excess of wine, revellings, banquettings, and _abominable
idolatries_.”[347] If we cannot admit this to be a just description of
the holy Apostle’s former life, we must perceive that, writing to Pagans
of whom it was all true, he beautifully withholds from his language
every trace of invidious distinction, puts himself for the moment into
the same class, and seems to take his share of the distressing
recollection.

The habitual delicacy with which Paul, likewise, classed himself with
every order of persons in turn, to whom he had any thing painful to say,
is known to every intelligent reader of his epistles. Hence, in _his_
writings too, we have often to consider _with whom_ it is that he is
holding his dialogue, and to make our interpretation dependent on the
answer. When, for example, he says, that Jesus “was delivered for _our_
offences, and was raised again for _our_ justification;” I ask, “for
whose?—was it for every body’s?—or for the Jews’, since Paul was a
Hebrew?” On looking closely into the argument, I find it beyond doubt
that neither of these answers is correct; and that the Apostle, in
conformity with his frequent practice, is certainly identifying himself,
Israelite though he was, with _the Gentiles_, to whom, at that moment,
his reasoning applies itself. The neighbouring verses have expressions
which clearly enough declare this; “when we were _yet without
strength_,” and “_while we were yet sinners_,” Christ died for us. It is
to the _Gentile Church_ at Corinth, and while expatiating on their
privileges and relations as such, that Paul speaks of the
disqualifications and legal unholiness of the Heathen, as vanishing in
the death of the Messiah; as the recovered leper’s uncleanness was
removed, and his banishment reversed, and his exclusion from the temple
ended, when the lamb without blemish, which the law prescribed as his
sin-offering, bled beneath the knife, so did God provide, in Jesus, a
lamb without blemish for the exiled and unsanctified Gentiles, to bring
them from their far dwelling in the leprous haunts of this world’s
wilderness, and admit them to the sanctuary of spiritual health and
worship: “He hath made him to be a sin-offering for us (Gentiles), who
knew no sin; that we might be made the justified of God in him;”[348]
entering, under the Messiah, the community of saints. That, in this
sacrificial allusion, the Gentile adoption is still the Apostle’s only
theme, is evident hence; that twice in this very passage, he declares
that he is speaking of that peculiar “reconciliation,” the word and
ministry of which have been committed to himself; he is dwelling on the
topic most natural to one who “magnified his office,” as “Apostle of the
Gentiles.”

To the same parties was Paul writing, when he said, “Christ, our
passover, is sacrificed for us.”[349] Frequently as this sentence is
cited in evidence of the doctrine of Atonement, there is hardly a verse
in Scripture more utterly inapplicable; nor, if the doctrine were true,
could anything be more inept than an allusion to it in this place. I do
not dwell on the fact that the paschal lamb was neither sin-offering nor
proper sacrifice at all: for the elucidation of the death of Jesus by
sacrificial analogies is as easy and welcome, as any other mode of
representing it. But I turn to the whole context, and seek for the
leading idea before multiplying inferences from a subordinate
illustration. I find the author treating, not of the _deliverance_ of
believers from curse or exclusion, but of their duty to keep the
churches cleansed, by the expulsion of notoriously profligate members.
Such persons they are to cast from them, as the Jews, at the passover,
swept from their houses all the leaven they contained; and as, for eight
days at that season, only pure unleavened bread was allowed for use, so
the church must keep the Gospel-festival, free from the ferment of
malice and wickedness, and tasting nothing but sincerity and truth. This
comparison is the primary sentiment of the whole passage; under cover of
which, the Apostle is urging the Corinthians to expel a certain
licentious offender: and only because the feast of unleavened bread, on
which his fancy has alighted, set in with the day of passover, does he
allude to this in completion of the figure. As his correspondents were
Gentiles, their Christianity first became possible with the death of
Christ; with him, as an immortal, their spiritual relations commenced;
when he rose, they rose with him, as by a divine attraction, from an
earthly to a heavenly state; their old and corrupt man had been buried
together with him, and, with the human infirmities of his person left
behind for ever in his sepulchre; and it became them, “to seek those
things which are above,” and to “yield themselves to God, as those that
are alive from the dead.” This period of the Lord’s sequestration in the
heavens, Paul represents as a festival of purity to the disciples on
earth, ushered in by the self-sacrifice of Christ. The time is come, he
says; cast away the leaven, for the passover is slain, blessed bread of
heaven to them that taste it! let nothing now be seen in all the
household of the church, but the unleavened cake of simplicity and love.

Paul again appears as the advocate of the Gentiles, when he protests
that now between them and the Jews “there is no difference; since all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God:” that the Hebrew has
lost all claim to the Messianic adoption, and can have no hope but in
that free grace of God, which has a sovereign right to embrace the
Heathen too; and which, in fact, has compassed the Gentiles within its
redemption, by causing Jesus the Messiah to die; “by whose blood God
hath set forth a propitiation, through faith; to evince his justice,
while overlooking, with the forbearance of God, transgressions past;—to
evince his justice in the arrangements of the present crisis; which
preserve his justice (to the Israelite), yet justify on mere
discipleship to Jesus.”[350] The great question which the Apostle
discusses throughout this epistle, is this: “on what terms is a man now
admitted as a subject to the Messiah, so as to be acknowledged by him,
when he comes to erect his kingdom?” “He must be one of the circumcised,
to whom alone the holy law and promises are given,” says the Jew. “That
is well,” replies Paul: “only the promises, you remember, are
conditional on obedience; and he who claims by the law must stand the
judgment of the law. Can your nation abide this test, and will you stake
your hopes upon the issue? Or is there on record against you a violation
of every condition of your boasted covenant; wholesale and national
transgression, which your favourite code itself menaces with ‘cutting
off?’ Have you even rejected and crucified the very Messiah, who was
tendered to you in due fulfilment of the promises? Take your trial by
the principles of your law, and you must be cast off, and perish, as
certainly as the Heathen whom you despise; and whose rebellion against
the natural law, gross as it is, does not surpass your own offences
against the tables of Moses. You must abandon the claim of right, the
high talk of God’s Justice and plighted faith;—which are alike
ill-suited to you both. The rules of law are out of the question, and
would admit nobody; and we must ascend again to the sovereign will and
free mercy of him, who is the source of law; and who, to bestow a
blessing which its resources cannot confer, may devise new methods of
beneficence. God has violated no pledge. Messiah came to Israel, and
never went beyond its bounds; the uncircumcised had no part in him; and
every Hebrew who desired it, was received as his subject. But when the
people would not have him, and threw away their ancient title, was God
either to abandon his vicegerent, or to force him on the unwilling? No:
rather did it befit him to say; ‘if they will reject and crucify my
servant,—why, let him die, and then he is Israelite no more; I will
raise him, and take him apart in his immortality; where his blood of
David is lost; and the holiness of his humanity is glorified; and all
shall be his, who will believe, and love him, as he there exists,
spiritually and truly.’” Thus, according to Paul, does God provide a new
method of adoption or justification, without violating any promises of
the old. Thus he makes Faith in Jesus,—a moral act instead of a
genealogical accident,—the single condition of reception into the Divine
kingdom upon earth. Thus, after the passage of Christ from this world to
another, Jew and Gentile are on an equality in relation to the Messiah;
the one gaining nothing by his past privileges; the other, not visited
with exclusion for past idolatry and sins; but assured, in Messiah’s
death, that these are to be overlooked, and treated as if cleansed away.
He finds himself invited into the very penetralia of that sanctuary of
pure faith and hope, from which before he had been repelled as an
unclean thing; as if its ark of mercy had been purified for ever from
his unworthy touch, or he himself had been sprinkled by some sudden
consecration. And all this was the inevitable and instant effect of that
death on Calvary; which took Messiah from the Jews, and gave him to the
world.

With emphasis, not less earnest than that of Paul, does the apostle John
repudiate the notion of any _claim_ on the Divine admission by law or
righteousness; and insist on humble and unqualified acceptance of God’s
free grace and remission for the past, as the sole avenue of entrance to
the kingdom. This avenue was open, however, to all “who confessed that
Jesus the Messiah had come in the flesh;”[351] in other words, that,
during his mortal life, Jesus had been indicated as this future Prince;
and that his ministry was the Messiah’s preliminary visit to that earth
on which shortly he would re-appear to reign. The great object of that
visit was to prepare the world for his real coming; for as yet it was
very unfit for so great a crisis; and especially to open, by his death,
a way of admission for the Gentiles, and frame, on their behalf, an act
of oblivion for the past. “If,” says the apostle to them, “we walk in
the light, _as he is in the light_” (of love and heaven), “we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son
cleanseth us from all sin:”[352] the Israelite will embrace the Gentiles
in fraternal relations, knowing that the cross has removed their past
unholiness. Nor let the Hebrew rely on anything now but the divine
forbearance; to appeal to rights will serve no longer: “if we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”[353] Nor
let any one despair of a reception, or even a restoration, because he
has been an idolater and sinner: “Jesus Christ the righteous” is “an
advocate with the Father” for admitting all who are willing to be his;
“and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only (not
merely for our small portion of Gentiles, already converted); but also
for the _whole_ world,”[354] if they will but accept him. He died to
become universal; to make all his own; to spread an oblivion, wide as
the earth, over all that had embarrassed the relations to the Messiah,
and made men aliens, instead of Sons of God. Yet did no spontaneous
movement of their good affections solicit this change. It was “not that
we (Gentiles) loved God; but that he loved us, and sent his Son, the
propitiation for our sins;” “he sent his only-begotten Son into the
world, that we might live through him.”[355] That this epistle was
addressed to Gentiles, and is therefore occupied with the same leading
idea respecting the cross, which pervades the writings of Paul, is
rendered probable by its concluding words, which could hardly be
appropriate to Jews: “keep yourselves from idols.”[356] How little the
apostle associated any vicarious idea even with a form of phrase most
constantly employed by modern theology to express it, is evident from
the parallel which he draws, in the following words, between the death
of our Lord and that of the Christian martyrs; “hereby perceive we love,
because _Christ_ laid down his life _for us_; and we ought to lay down
our lives _for the brethren_.”[357]

Are then the _Gentiles alone_ beneficially affected by the death of
Christ; and is no wider efficacy _ever_ assigned to it in Scripture? The
great number of passages to which I have already applied this single
interpretation, will show that I consider it as comprising _the great
leading idea_ of the apostolic theology on this subject; nor do I think
that there is (out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which I shall soon
notice) a single doctrinal allusion to the cross, from which this
conception is wholly absent. At the same time, I am not prepared to
maintain, that this is the _only_ view of the crucifixion and
resurrection ever present to the mind of the apostles. Jews themselves,
they naturally inquired, how _Israel_, in particular, stood affected by
the unanticipated death of its Messiah; in what way its relations were
changed, when the offered Prince became the executed victim; and how far
matters would have been different, if, as had been expected, the
Anointed had assumed his rights and taken his power at once; and,
instead of making his first advent a mere preliminary and warning visit
“in the flesh,” had set up the kingdom forthwith, and gathered with him
his few followers to “reign on the earth.” Had this—instead of
submission to death, removal, and delay—been his adopted course, what
would have become of his own nation, who had rejected him;—who must have
been tried by that law which was their boast, and under which he came;
who had long been notorious offenders against its conditions, and now
brought down its final curse by despising the claims of the accredited
Messiah? They must have been utterly “cut off,” and cast out among the
“aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,” “without Messiah,” “without
hope,” “without God;” for while “circumcision profiteth, _if thou keep
the law_; yet if thou be a _breaker of the law_, thy circumcision is
made uncircumcision.”[358] Had he come _then_ “to be glorified in his
saints, and to be admired in all them that believe;”—had he then been
“revealed with his mighty angels” (whom he might have summoned by
“legions”);—it must have been “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them
that knew not God, nor obeyed the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus
Christ;” to “punish with everlasting destruction from the presence of
the Lord and the glory of his power.”[359] The sins and prospects of
Israel being thus terrible, and its rejection imminent (for Messiah was
already in the midst of them),—he withheld his hand; refused to
precipitate their just fate; and said, “Let us give them time and wait;
I will go apart into the heavens, and peradventure they will repent;
only they must receive me then spiritually, and by hearty faith, not by
carnal right, admitting thus the willing Gentile with themselves.” And
so he prepared to die and retire; he did not permit them to be cut off,
but was cut off himself instead; he restrained the curse of their own
law from falling on them, and rather perished himself by a foul and
accursed lot, which that same law pronounces to be the vilest and most
polluted of deaths. Thus says St. Paul to the Jews: “he hath redeemed us
from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written
‘cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’”[360] In this way, but for
the death of the Messiah, Israel too must have been lost; and by that
event they received time for repentance, and a way for remission of
sins; found a means of reconciliation still; saw their providence, which
had been lowering for judgment, opening over them in propitiation once
more; the just had died for the unjust, to bring them to God. What was
this delay,—this suspension of judgment,—this opportunity of return and
faith,—but an instance of “the long-suffering of God,” with which “he
endures the vessels of wrath (Jews) fitted to destruction; and makes
known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy; which he had
afore prepared unto glory?”[361] If Christ had not withdrawn awhile,—if
his power had been taken up at once, and wielded in stern and legal
justice, a deluge of judgment must have overwhelmed the earth, and swept
away both Jew and Gentile, leaving but a remnant safe. But in mercy was
the mortal life of Jesus turned into a preluding message of notice and
warning, like the tidings which Noah received of the flood; and as the
growing frame of the ark gave signal to the world of the coming
calamity, afforded an interval for repentance, and made the patriarch,
as he built, a constant “preacher of righteousness;”[362] so the
increasing body of the Church, since the warning retreat of Christ to
heaven, proclaims the approaching “day of the Lord,” admonishes that
“all should come to repentance,”[363] and fly betimes to that faith and
baptism which Messiah’s death and resurrection have left as an ark of
safety. “Once in the days of Noah, the long-suffering of God waited
while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were
saved by water: a representation, this, of the way in which baptism
(not, of course, carnal washing, but the engagement of a good conscience
with God,) saves us now, _by the resurrection of Jesus Christ_; who is
gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels, and
authorities, and powers, being made subject to him.”[364] Yet, “the time
is short,”[365] and must be “redeemed;”[366] “it is the last hour;”[367]
“the Lord,” “the coming of the Lord,” “the end of all things,” are “at
hand.”[368]

I have described _one_ aspect, which the death of the Messiah presented
to _the Jews_; and, in this, we have found another primary conception,
explanatory of the scriptural language respecting the cross. Of the two
relations in which this event appeared (the Gentile and the Israelitish)
I believe the former to be by far the most familiar to the New Testament
authors, and to furnish the true interpretation of almost all their
phraseology on the subject. But, as my readers may have noticed, many
passages receive illustration by reference to either notion; and some
may have a meaning compounded of both. I must not pause to make any
minute adjustment of these claims, on the part of the two interpreting
ideas: it is enough that, either separately or in union, they have now
been taken round the whole circle of apostolic language respecting the
cross, and detected in every difficult passage the presence of sense and
truth, and the absence of all hint of vicarious atonement.

It was on the _unbelieving_ portion of the Jewish people, that the death
of their Messiah conferred the national blessings and opportunities to
which I have adverted. But to _the converts_ who had been received by
him during his mortal life, and who would have been heirs of his glory,
had he assumed it at once, it was less easy to point out any personal
benefits from the cross. That the Christ had retired from this world was
but a disappointing postponement of their hopes: that he had perished as
a felon, was shocking to their pride, and turned their ancient boast
into a present scorn: that he had become spiritual and immortal made him
no longer theirs “as concerning the flesh,” and, by admitting Gentiles
with themselves, set aside their favourite law. So offensive to them was
this unexpected slight on the institutions of Moses, immemorially
reverenced as the ordinances of God, that it became important to give
some turn to the death of Jesus, by which that event might be harmonized
with the national system, and be shown to _effect the abrogation of the
Law, on principles strictly legal_. This was the object of the writer of
the Epistle to the Hebrews; who thus gives us a third idea of the
relations of the cross,—bearing, indeed, an essential resemblance to St.
Paul’s Gentile view, but illustrated in a manner altogether different.
No trace is to be observed here of Paul’s noble glorying in the Cross:
so studiously is every allusion to the crucifixion avoided, till all the
argumentative part of the epistle has been completed, that a reader
finds the conclusion already in sight, without having gained any notion
of _the mode_ of the Lord’s death, whether even it was natural or
violent,—a literal human sacrifice, or a voluntary self-immolation. Its
ignominy and its agonies are wholly unmentioned; and his mortal
infirmities and sufferings are explained, not as the spontaneous
adoptions of previous compassion in him, but as God’s fitting discipline
for rendering him “a merciful and faithful high priest.”[369] They are
referred to in the tone of apology, not of pride; as needing rather to
be reconciled with his office, than to be boldly expounded as its grand
essential. The object of the author clearly is, to find a place for the
death of Jesus among the Messianic functions; and he persuades the
Hebrew Christians that it is (not a satisfaction for moral guilt, but) a
commutation for the Mosaic Law. In order to understand his argument, we
must advert for a moment to the prejudices which it was designed to
conciliate and correct.

It is not easy for us to realize the feelings with which the Israelite,
in the yet palmy days of the Levitical worship, would hear of an
abrogation of the Law;—the anger and contempt with which the mere bigot
would repudiate the suggestion;—the terror with which the new convert
would make trial of his freedom;—the blank and infidel feeling with
which he would look round, and find himself drifted away from his
anchorage of ceremony; the sinking heart, with which he would hear the
reproaches of his countrymen against his apostacy. Every authoritative
ritual draws towards itself an attachment too strong for reason and the
sense of right; and transfers the feeling of obligation from realities
to symbols. Among the Hebrews, this effect was the more marked and the
more pernicious, because their ceremonies were, in many instances, only
remotely connected with any important truth or excellent end; they were
separated by several removes from any spiritual utility. Rites were
enacted to sustain other rites; institution lay beneath institution,
through so many successive steps, that the crowning principle at the
summit easily passed out of sight. To keep alive the grand truth of the
Divine Unity, there was a gorgeous temple worship: to perform this
worship there was a priesthood: to support the priesthood, there were
(among other sources of income) dues paid in the form of sacrifice: to
provide against the non-payment of dues there were penalties: to prevent
an injurious pressure of these penalties, there were exemptions, as in
cases of sickness: and to put a check on trivial claims of exemption, it
must be purchased by submission to a fee, under name of an atonement.
Wherever such a system is received as divine, and based on the same
authority with the great law of duty, it will always, by its
definiteness and precision, attract attention from graver moral
obligations. Its materiality renders it calculable: its account with the
conscience can be exactly ascertained: as it has little obvious utility
to men, it appears the more directly paid to God; it is regarded as the
special means of pleasing him, of placating his anger, and purchasing
his promises. Hence it may often happen, that the more the offences
against the spirit of duty, the more are rites multiplied in
propitiation; and the harvest of ceremonies and that of crimes ripen
together.

At a state not far from this, had the Jews arrived, when Christianity
was preached. Their moral sentiments were so far perverted, that they
valued nothing in themselves, in comparison with their legal exactitude,
and hated all beyond themselves for the want of this. They were eagerly
expecting the Deliverer’s kingdom, nursing up their ambition for his
triumphs: curling the lip, as the lash of oppression fell upon them, in
suppressed anticipation of vengeance; satiating a temper, at once fierce
and servile, with dreams of Messiah’s coming judgment, when the blood of
the Patriarchs should be the title of the world’s nobles, and the
everlasting reign should begin in Jerusalem. Why was the hour delayed,
they impatiently asked themselves? Was it that they had offended
Jehovah, and secretly sinned against some requirement of his law? And
then they set themselves to a renewed precision, a more slavish
punctiliousness than before. Ascribing their continued depression to
their imperfect legal obedience, they strained their ceremonialism
tighter than ever: and hoped to be soon justified from their past sins,
and ready for the mighty prince and the latter days.

What then must have been the feeling of the Hebrew, when told that all
his punctualities had been thrown away; that at the advent, faith in
Jesus, not obedience to the law, was to be the title to admission; and
that the redeemed at that day would be, not the scrupulous
Pharisee,—whose dead works would be of no avail; but all who, with the
heart, have worthily confessed the name of the Lord Jesus? What doctrine
could be more unwelcome to the haughty Israelite? it dashed his pride of
ancestry to the ground. It brought to the same level with himself the
polluted Gentile, whose presence would alone render all unclean in the
Messiah’s kingdom. It proved his past ritual anxieties to have been all
wasted. It cast aside for the future the venerated law; left it in
neglect to die; and made all the apparatus of Providence for its
maintenance end in absolutely nothing. Was then the Messiah to
supersede, and not to vindicate the law? How different this from the
picture which prophets had drawn of his golden age, when Jerusalem was
to be the pride of the earth, and her temple the praise of nations,
sought by the feet of countless pilgrims, and decked with the splendour
of their gifts! How could a true Hebrew be justified in a life without
law? How think himself safe in a profession, which was without temple,
without priest, without altar, without victim?

Not unnaturally, then, did the Hebrews regard with reluctance two of the
leading features of Christianity; the death of the Messiah, and the
freedom from the law. The epistle addressed to them was designed to
soothe their uneasiness, and to show, that if the Mosaic institutions
were superseded, it was in conformity with principles and analogies
contained within themselves. With great address, the writer links the
two difficulties together, and makes the one explain the other. He finds
a ready means of effecting this, in the sacrificial ideas familiar to
every Hebrew; for by representing the death of Jesus as commutation for
legal observances, he is only ascribing to it an operation, acknowledged
to have place in the death of every lamb slain as a sin-offering at the
altar. These offerings were a distinct recognition on the part of the
Levitical code, of a principle of _equivalents_ for its ordinances; a
proof that, under certain conditions, they might yield: nothing more,
therefore, was necessary, than to show that the death of Christ
established those conditions. And such a method of argument was attended
by this advantage, that while the _practical end_ would be obtained of
terminating all ceremonial observance, the Law was yet treated as _in
theory_ perpetual; not as ignominiously abrogated, but as legitimately
commuted. Just as the Israelite, in paying his offering at the altar to
compensate for ritual omissions, recognized thereby the claims of the
law, while he obtained impunity for its neglect; so, if Providence could
be shown to have provided a legal substitute for the system, its
authority was acknowledged, at the moment that its abolition was
secured.

Let us advert then to the functions of the Mosaic sin-offerings, to
which the writer has recourse to illustrate his main position. They were
of the nature of a _mulct or acknowledgment rendered, for unconscious or
inevitable disregard of ceremonial liabilities, and contraction of
ceremonial uncleanness_. Such uncleanness might be incurred from various
causes; and while unremoved by the appointed methods of purification,
disqualified from attendance at the sanctuary, and “cut off” “the
guilty” “from among the congregation.” To touch a dead body, to enter a
tent where a corpse lay, rendered a person “unclean for seven days;” to
come in contact with a forbidden animal, a bone, a grave; to be next to
any one struck with sudden death; to be afflicted with certain kinds of
bodily disease and infirmity; unwittingly to lay a finger on a person
unclean, occasioned defilement, and necessitated a purification or an
atonement.[370] Independently of these offences, enforced upon the
Israelite by the accidents of life, it was not easy for even the most
cautious worshipper to keep pace with the complicated series of petty
debts which the law of ordinances was always running up against him. If
his offering had an invisible blemish; if he omitted a tithe, because
“he wist it not;” or inadvertently fell into arrear, by a single day,
with respect to a known liability; if absent from disease, he was
compelled to let his ritual account accumulate; “though it be hidden
from him,” he must “be guilty, and bear his iniquity,” and bring his
victim.[371] On the birth of a child, the mother, after the lapse of a
prescribed period, made her pilgrimage to the temple, presented her
sin-offering, and “the priest made atonement for her.”[372] The poor
leper, long banished from the face of men, and unclean by the nature of
his disease, became a debtor to the sanctuary, and on return from his
tedious quarantine, brought his lamb of atonement, and departed thence,
clear from neglected obligations to his law.[373] It was impossible,
however, to provide by specific enactment for every case of ritual
transgression and impurity, arising from inadvertency or necessity.
Scarcely could it be expected that the courts of worship themselves
would escape defilement, from imperfections in the offerings, or
unconscious disqualification in people or in priest. To clear off the
whole invisible residue of such sins, an annual “day of atonement” was
appointed; the people thronged the avenues and approaches of the
tabernacle; in their presence a kid was slain for their own
transgressions, and for the high-priest the more dignified expiation of
a heifer: charged with the blood of each successively, he sprinkled not
only the exterior altar open to the sky, but, passing through the first
and Holy chamber into the Holy of Holies, (never entered else), he
touched, with finger dipped in blood, the sacred lid (the Mercy-seat)
and foreground of the Ark.[374] At that moment, while he yet lingers
behind the veil, the purification is complete; on no worshipper of
Israel does any legal unholiness rest; and were it possible for the
high-priest to remain in that interior retreat of Jehovah, still
protracting the expiatory act, so long would this national purity
continue, and the debt of ordinances be effaced as it arose. But he must
return; the sanctifying rite must end; the people be dismissed; the
priests resume the daily ministrations; the law open its stern account
afresh; and in the mixture of national exactitude and neglects,
defilements multiply again till the recurring anniversary lifts off the
burden once more. Every year, then, the necessity comes round of “making
atonement for the Holy sanctuary,” “for the tabernacle,” “for the
altar,” “for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation.”
Yet, though requiring periodical renewal, the rite, so far as it went,
had an efficacy which no Hebrew could deny; for ceremonial sins,
unconscious or inevitable (to which all atonement was limited[375]), it
was accepted as an indemnity; and put it beyond doubt that Mosaic
obedience was commutable.

Such was the system of ideas, by availing himself of which the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews would persuade his correspondents to forsake
their legal observances. “You can look without uneasiness,” he suggests,
“on your ritual omissions, when the blood of some victim has been
presented instead, and the penetralia of your sanctuary have been
sprinkled with the offering: well, on no other terms would I soothe your
anxiety; precisely such equivalent sacrifice does Christianity exhibit,
only of so peculiar a nature, that for _all_ ceremonial neglects,
intentional no less than inadvertent, you may rely upon indemnity.” The
Jews entertained a belief respecting their temple, which enabled the
writer to give a singular force and precision to his analogy. They
conceived, that the tabernacle of their worship was but the copy of a
divine structure, devised by God himself, made by no created hand, and
preserved eternally in heaven: this was “the true tabernacle, which the
Lord pitched, and not man;” which no mortal had beheld, except Moses in
the mount that he might “make all things according to that
pattern;”[376] within whose Holy of Holies dwelt no emblem or emanation
of God’s presence, but his own immediate Spirit; and the celestial
furniture of which required, in proportion to its dignity, the
purification of a nobler sacrifice, and the ministrations of a diviner
priest, than befitted the “worldly sanctuary”[377] below. And who then
can mistake the meaning of Christ’s departure from this world, or doubt
what office he conducts above? He is called by his ascension to the
Pontificate of heaven; consecrated, “not after the law of any carnal
commandment, but after the power of an endless life;”[378] he drew aside
the veil of his mortality, and passed into the inmost court of God: and
as he must needs “have somewhat to offer,”[379] he takes the only blood
he had ever shed,—which was his own,—and like the high-priest before the
Mercy-seat, sanctifies therewith the people that stand without,
“redeeming the transgressions” which “the first covenant” of rites
entailed.[380] And he has not returned; still is he hid within that
holiest place; and still the multitude he serves turn thither a silent
and expectant gaze; he prolongs the purification still; and while he
appears not, no other rites can be resumed, nor any legal defilement be
contracted. Thus, meanwhile, ordinances cease their obligation, and the
sin against them has lost its power. How different this from the
offerings of Jerusalem, whose temple was but the “symbol and shadow” of
that sanctuary above.[381] In the Hebrew “sacrifices there was a
remembrance again made of sins every year;”[382] “the high-priest
annually entered the holy place;”[383] being but a mortal, he could not
go in with his own blood and _remain_ but must take that of other
creatures and _return_; and hence it became “not possible that the blood
of bulls and of goats should _take away_ sins,”[384] for instantly they
began to accumulate again. But to the very nature of Christ’s offering,
a perpetuity of efficacy belongs; bearing no other than _his own_
blood,” he was immortal when his ministration began, and “ever liveth to
make his intercession;[385] he could “not offer himself often, for then
must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world,”—and “it
is appointed unto men _only once_ to die:” so that “_once for all_ he
entered into the holy place, and obtained a redemption that is
_perpetual_;” “_once_ in the end of the world hath he appeared, and by
sacrificing himself hath absolutely _put away_ sin;” “this man, after he
had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand
of God,” “for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified,”[386] The ceremonial then, with its periodical
transgressions, and atonements, is suspended; the services of the outer
tabernacle cease, for the holiest of all is made manifest;[387] one who
is “priest for ever” dwells therein: one “consecrated for evermore,”
“holy, harmless, undefiled, in his celestial dwelling quite separate
from sinners;[388] who needeth not _daily_, as those high priests, to
offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s;
for this he did _once for all_ when he offered up himself.”[389]

Nor is it in its perpetuity alone, that the efficacy of the Christian
sacrifice transcends the atonements of the law; it removes a higher
order of ritual transgressions. It cannot be supposed, indeed, that
Messiah’s life is no nobler offering than that of a creature from the
herd or flock, and will confer no more immunity. Accordingly, it goes
beyond those “_sins of ignorance_,” those ceremonial inadvertences, for
which alone there was remission in Israel; and reaches to _voluntary_
neglects of the sacerdotal ordinances; ensuring indemnity for legal
omissions, when incurred not simply by the accidents of the flesh, but
even by intention of the conscience. This is no greater boon than the
dignity of the sacrifice requires; and does but give to his people below
that living relation of soul to God, which he himself sustains above.
“If the blood of bulls and of goats ... sanctifieth to the purifying of
the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify (even) your
conscience from dead works (ritual observances) to serve the living
God!”[390] Let then the ordinances go, and the Lord “put his laws _into
the mind_ and write them _in the heart_;” and let all have “boldness to
enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by this new and living way
which he hath consecrated for us;” “provoking each other to love and to
good works.”[391]

See, then, in brief, the objection of the Hebrews to the gospel; and the
reply of their instructor. They said; “What a blank is this; you have no
temple, no priest, no ritual! How is it that, in his ancient covenant,
God is so strict about ceremonial service, and permits no neglect,
however incidental, without atonement; yet in this new economy, throws
the whole system away; letting us run up an everlasting debt to a law
confessedly unrepealed, without redemption of it, or atonement for it?”

“Not without redemption and atonement,” replies their evangelical
teacher; “temple, sacrifice, priest, remain to us also, only glorified
into proportions worthy of a heavenly dispensation; our temple, in the
skies; our sacrifice, Messiah’s mortal person; our priest, his
ever-living spirit. How poor the efficacy of your former offerings! year
after year, your ritual debt began again: for the blood dried and
vanished from the tabernacle which it purified; the priest returned from
the inner shrine; and when there, he stood, with the interceding blood,
before the emblem, not the reality of God. But Christ, not at the end of
a year, but at the end of the great world-era of the Lord, has come to
offer up himself,—no lamb so unblemished as he; his voluntary and
immortal spirit, than which was nothing ever more divinely consecrate,
becomes officiating priest, and strikes his own person with immolating
blow; it falls and bleeds on earth, as on the outer altar, standing on
the threshold of the sanctuary of heaven: thither he ascends with the
memorials of his death, vanishes into the Holy of Holies of the skies,
presents himself before the very living God, and sanctifies the temple
there and worshippers here: saying to us, ‘drop now for ever the legal
burdens that weigh you down; doubt not that you are free, as my
glorified spirit here, from the defilements you are wont to dread; I
stay behind this veil of visible things to clear you of all such taint,
and put away such sin eternally. Trust then in me, and take up the
freedom of your souls: burst the dead works, that cling round your
conscience like cerements of the grave; and rise to me, by the living
power of duty, and loving allegiance to God.’”

So far then, as the death of Christ is treated in scripture
dogmatically, rather than historically, its effects are viewed in
contrast with the different order of things which must have been
expected, had he, as Messiah, _not_ died. And thus regarded, it
presented itself to the minds of the Apostles in three relations;

First, to the Gentiles, whom it drew in to be subjects of the Messiah,
by breaking down the barriers of his Hebrew personality, and rendering
him spiritual as well as immortal.

Secondly, to the unbelieving Jews; whom his retirement from this world
delivered from the judgment due to them, on the principles of their own
law, both for their _general_ violation of the _conditions_ of their
covenant, and for their positive rejection of him. His absence re-opened
their opportunities; and to tender them this act of long-suffering, he
took on himself the death which had been incurred by them.

Thirdly, to the believing Jews; the terms of whose discipleship the
Messiah’s death had changed, destroying all the benefits of their
lineage, and substituting an act of the mind, the simpler claim of
faith. It was therefore a commutation for the Ritual Law, and gave them
impunity and atonement for all its violations.

With the last two of these relations, beyond their remarkable historical
interest, we have no personal concern. The first remains, and ever will
remain, worthy of the glorious joy, with which Paul regarded and
expounded it. God has committed the rule of this world to no exclusive
Prince, and no sacerdotal power, and no earthly majesty; but to one
whose spirit, too divine to be limited to place and time, broke through
clouds of sorrow into the clearest heaven; and thither has since been
drawing our human love, though for ages now he has been unseen and
immortal. An impartial God, a holy and spiritual Law, an infinite hope
for all men,—are given to us by that generous cross.

It is evident that all three of the relations which I have described,
belonged to the death of Jesus, _in his capacity of Messiah_; and could
have had no existence, if he had not borne this character, but had been
simply a private martyr to his convictions. The foregoing exposition
gives a direct answer to the inquiry, pressed without the slightest
pertinence upon the Unitarian, why the phraseology of the cross is never
found applied to Paul or Peter, or any other noble confessor, who died
in attestation of the truth; why “no record is given that we are
justified by the blood of Stephen; or that he bare our sins in his own
body, and made reconciliation for us.”[392] I know not why such a
question should be submitted to us; we have assuredly no concern with
it; having never dreamt that the Apostles could have written as they did
respecting the death on Calvary, if they had thought of it only as a
scene of martyrdom. We have passed under review the whole language of
the New Testament on this subject; and in the interpretation of it have
_not even once_ had recourse to this, which is said to be our only view
of the cross. We have seen the apostles justly announcing their Lord’s
death, as a _proper propitiation_; because it placed whole classes of
men, without any meritorious change in their character, in saving
relations: declaring it a _strict substitute_ for others’ punishment; on
the ground that there were those who must have perished, if he had not;
and that he died and retired, that they might remain and live:
describing it as a _sacrifice which put away sin_; because it did that
for ever, which the Levitical atonements achieved for a day: but we have
not found them ever appealing to it either as a satisfaction to the
justice of God, or an example of martyrdom to men. The Trinitarians have
one idea of this event themselves; and their fancy provides their
opponents with one idea of it; of the former not a trace exists, on any
page of Scripture; and of the latter, the Unitarian need not avail
himself at all, in explaining the language, whereof it is said to be his
solitary key.

Nowhere, then, in Scripture do we meet with anything corresponding with
the prevailing notions of vicarious redemption; everywhere, and most
emphatically in the personal instructions of our Lord, do we find a
doctrine of forgiveness, and an idea of salvation, utterly inconsistent
with it. He spake often of the unqualified clemency of God to his
returning children; never once of the satisfaction demanded by his
justice. He spake of the joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth;
but was silent on the sacrificial faith, without which penitence is said
to be unavailing. Nor did he, like his modern disciples, teach that
there are _two separate salvations_, which must follow each other in a
fixed order; first, redemption from the penalty, secondly from the
spirit, of sin; pardon for the past, before sanctification in the
present; a removal of the “hindrance in God,” previous to its
annihilation in ourselves. If indeed there were in Christianity two
deliverances, discriminating and successive, it would be more in
accordance with its spirit to invert this order;—to recal from
alienation first, and announce forgiveness afterwards; to restore from
guilt, before cancelling the penalty; and permit the _healing_ to
anticipate the _pardoning_ love. At least, there would seem, in such
arrangement, to be a greater jealousy for the holiness of the divine
law, a severer reservation of God’s complacency for those who have
broken from the service of sin, than in the system, which proclaims
impunity to the rebel will, ere yet its estrangement is renounced. If
the outward remission precedes the inward sanctification, then does God
admit to favour the yet unsanctified; guilt keeps us in no exile from
him: and though the holy Spirit is to follow afterwards, it becomes the
peculiar office of the cross to lift us as we are, with every stain upon
the soul and every vile habit unretraced, from the brink of perdition to
the assurance of glory: the divine lot is given to us, before the divine
love is awakened in us; and the heirs of heaven have yet to become the
children of holiness. With what consistency can the advocates of such an
economy accuse its opponents of dealing lightly with sin, of deluding
men into a false trust, and administering seductive flatteries to human
nature?[393] What! shall we, who plant in every soul of sin a Hell,
whence no foreign force, no external God, can pluck us, any more than
they can tear us from our identity;—we, who hide the fires of torment in
no viewless gulf, but make them ubiquitous as guilt;—we, who suffer no
outward agent from Eden, or the Abyss, or Calvary, to encroach upon the
solitude of man’s responsibility, and confuse the simplicity of
conscience;—we, who teach that God will not, and even cannot, spare the
froward, till they be froward no more, but must permit the burning lash
to fall, till they cry aloud for mercy, and throw themselves freely into
his embrace;—shall we be rebuked for a lax administration of peace, by
those who think that a moment may turn the alien into the elect? It is
no flattery of our nature, to reverence deeply its moral capacities: we
only discern in them the more solemn trust; and see in their abuse the
fouler shame. And it is not of what men _are_, but of what they _might
be_, that we encourage noble and cheerful thoughts. Doubtless, we think
exaggeration possible (which our opponents apparently do not) even in
the portraiture of their actual character: and perhaps we are not the
less likely to awaken true convictions of sin, that we strive to speak
of it with the voice of discriminative justice, instead of the
monotonous thunders of vengeance; and to draw its image in the natural
tints provided by the conscience, rather than in the præternatural
flame-colour mingled in the crucibles of Hell.

In making _penal_ redemption and _moral_ redemption separate and
successive, the vicarious scheme, we submit, is inconsistent with the
Christian idea of salvation. Not that we take the second, and reject the
first, as our Trinitarian friends imagine; nor that we invert their
order. We accept them both; putting them however, not in succession, but
in super-position, so that they coalesce. The power and the punishment
of sin perish together; and together begin the holiness and the bliss of
heaven. Whatever extracts the poison, cools the sting: nor can the
divine vigour of spiritual health enter, without its freedom and its
joy. That there can be any separate dealings with our past guilt and
with our present character, is not a truth of God, but a fiction of the
schools. The sanctification of the one is the redemption of the other.
The mind given up to passion, or chained to self, or any how alienated
from the love and life divine, dwells, whatever be its faith, in the
dark and terrible abyss: while he, and he only, that in the freedom and
tranquillity of great affections, communes with God and toils for men,
understands the meaning, and wins the promises, of heaven. Am I asked,
‘What then is to persuade the sinful heart, thus to draw near to
God;—what, but a proclamation of absolute pardon, can break down the
secret distrust, which keeps our nature back, wrapped in the reserve of
conscious guilt?’ I reply; however much these fears and hesitations
might cling round us, and restrain us from the mystic Deity of Nature,
they can have no place in our intercourse with the Father whom Jesus
represents. It needs only that Christ be truly his image, to know “that
the hindrance is not with him, but entirely in ourselves:”[394] to see
that there is no anger in his look; to feel that he invites us to
unreserved confession, and accepts our self-abandonment to him; that he
lifts the repentant, prostrate at his feet, and speaks the words of
severe, but truest hope. Am I told, ‘that only the gratitude excited by
personal rescue from tremendous danger, by an unconditional and entire
deliverance, is capable of winning our reluctant nature, of opening the
soul to the access of the Divine Spirit, and bringing it to the service
of the Everlasting Will?’ I rejoice to acknowledge, that _some_ such
disinterested power must be awakened, some mighty forces of the heart be
called out, ere the regeneration can take place that renders us children
of the Highest; ere we can break, with true new-birth, from the shell of
self, and try and train our wings in the atmosphere of God. The
permanent work of duty must be wrought by the affections; not by the
constraint, however solemn, of hope and fear; no self-perfectionating
process, elaborated by an anxious will, has warmth enough to ripen the
soul’s diviner fruits; the walks of outward morality, and the slopes of
deliberate meditation, it may keep smooth and trim; but cannot make the
true life-blossoms set, as in a garden of the Lord, and the foliage wave
as with the voice of God among the trees. I gladly admit that to a
believer in the vicarious sacrifice, the sense of pardon, the love of
the great deliverer, may well fulfil this blessed office, of carrying
him out of himself in genuine allegiance to a being most benign and
holy. And perceiving that, if this doctrine were removed, there is not,
_in the system of which it forms a part_, and which else would be all
terror, anything that could perform the same generous part, I can
understand why it seems to its advocates, an _essential_ power in the
renovation of the character. But great as it may be, within the limits
of its own narrow scheme, ideas possessed of higher moral efficacy are
not wanting, when we pass into a region of nobler and more Christian
thought. Shall we say that the view of the infinite Ruler, given in the
spoken wisdom or the living spirit of Christ, has no sanctifying power?
Yet where is there any trace in it of the satisfactionist’s redemption?
When we sit at Messiah’s feet, that transforming gratitude for an
extinguished penalty on which the prevailing theology insists, as its
central emotion, becomes replaced by a similar and profounder sentiment
towards the eternal Father. If to rescue men from a dreadful fate in the
future be a just title to our reverence, _never to have designed_ that
fate claims an affection yet more devoted; if there be a divine mercy in
annihilating an awful curse, in shedding only blessing there is surely a
diviner still. Shall the love restored to us after long delay, and in
consideration of an equivalent, work mightily on the heart; and shall
that which asked no purchase, which has been veiled by no cloud, which
has enfolded us always in its tranquillity, nor can ever quit the soul
opened to receive it, fail to penetrate the conscience, and dissolve the
frosts of our self-love by some holier flame? Never shall it be found
true, that God must threaten us with vengeance, ere we can feel the
shelter of his grace!

In truth, the Christian idea of salvation cannot be better illustrated,
than by the doubt which has been entertained respecting the proper
translation of my text. Some, referring it to spiritual redemption,
adhere to the common version; others, seeing that the apostle Peter is
explaining “by what power, or by what name” he had cured the lame man at
the temple gate, refer the words to this miracle of deliverance, and
render them thus; “neither is there _healing_ in any other; for there is
none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we can be
_healed_.” It matters little which it is; for whether we speak of body
or of mind, Jesus “_saves_” us by “_making us whole_;” by putting forth
upon us a divine and healing power, through which past suffering and
present decrepitude disappear together; which supplies the defective
elements of our nature; cools the burning of inward fever; or calls into
being new senses and perceptions, opening a diviner universe to our
experience. The deformed and crooked will, bowed by Satan, lo! these
many years, and nowise able to lift up itself, he loosens and makes
straight in uprightness. The moral paralytic, collapsed and prostrate
amid the stir of life, and incapably gazing on the moving waters in
which others find their health, has often started up at the summons of
that voice, though perchance “he wist not who it was;” and going his
way, has found it to be “the sabbath,” and owned the “work” of one who
is in the spirit of “the Father.” From the eye long dark and blind to
duty and to God, he has caused the film to pass away, and shown the
solemn look of life beneath a heaven so tranquil and sublime. Even the
dead of soul, close wrapped in bandages of selfishness,—that greediest
of graves,—have been quickened by his piercing call, and have come
forth; to learn, “when risen,” that only in the meekness that can obey
is there the power to command, only in the love that serves is there the
life of heart-felt liberty. To call, then, on the name and trust in the
spirit of Christ, is to invoke the restoring power of God; to give
symmetry and speed to our lame affections, and the vigour of an athlete
to our limping wills. There is not any Christian _salvation_ that is not
thus identical with Christian _perfection_: “nor any other name under
heaven given among men, whereby we may be (thus) _made whole_.” Let all
that would “be perfect be thus minded;”[395] seek “the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ;”[396] and they shall find in him a
“power to become the Sons of God.”[397]

NOTES.

---------------------

_Relation between Natural Religion and Revelation._

It is not easy to determine, with any precision, what is Mr. M‘Neile’s
estimate of the capabilities and defects of natural religion. It is
subjected to a vague and indistinct disparagement throughout his
lecture; the _impression_ is left, that the character of God cannot be
vindicated by appeal to his works; but I do not perceive that the
lecturer commits himself to any logical proposition on the subject. One
of his coadjutors,[398] however, has supplied this deficiency; and
taking, as an antagonist, a sentence from the second Lecture of the
present series, has argued at length, that “The moral Character and
Unity of God are not discoverable from the works of Creation.” He
affirms that “to talk of ‘discerning the moral attributes of God on the
material structures of the universe,’ is not only idle, but
unreasonable:” and the justification which he offers of this bold
statement seems to comprise the two following arguments:—

That the universe is analogous to a cathedral or other human edifice;
which discloses something of the Architect’s genius and power, but
nothing of his moral qualities: and

That the mixture of good and evil in the world perplexes the mind with
opposite reports of the Creator’s character.

If scepticism were a just object of moral rebuke, in what terms might we
not speak of this “infidel” rejection of God’s ancient and everlasting
oracles of nature? For the serious doubts and perplexities of the devout
student of creation, an unqualified respect may be entertained. But it
is to be regretted that the necessities of a system should tempt the
expounder of revelation to assail, with reckless indifference, the
primitive sentiments of all religion. The aversion of orthodoxy to the
theology of the unsophisticated reason and heart is, however, to be
classed among the natural antipathies. Among all the extravagances of
modern English divinity, unknown to the sound and healthy era of our
national church, it is perhaps the most significant; indicating that
final obscuration of Christianity, in which it cannot be made to shine
without putting out every other light. This destructive mode of
argumentation, which discredits everything foreign to the favourite
system, is the evident result of fear, not of faith: it is a theological
adoption of the Chinese policy; and keeps the Celestial Empire safe, by
regarding every stranger as a possible spy; and excluding all alien
ideas as forerunners of revolution. The citadel of faith is defended, by
making the most dreadful havoc of every power which ought to be its
strength and ornament. Put out reason, but save the Trinity; suborn
experience, but prove depravity; disparage conscience, but secure the
Atonement; bewilder the sentiments of justice and benevolence, only
guard the everlasting Hell;—have long been the instructions of orthodoxy
to its defenders: and now we are asked to silence the anthem of nature
to the God of _love_, that priests without disturbance may prove him the
God of _vengeance_; and to withdraw our eye from the telescope of
science, which reveals the ONENESS of the Creator’s work, that we may
examine, through a church microscope, the _plurality_ of a Hebrew noun.
Can those who taunt the Unitarians with the _negative_ character of
their system, give a satisfactory account of the _positive_ merits of a
religion which _dis_believes reason, _dis_trusts the moral sense,
_dis_likes science, _dis_credits nature, and for all who are without the
Bible and a fit interpreter, _dis_owns the moral character of God?

In commenting upon Mr. James’s position on this last point, I will
confine myself to three observations:—the first, relating to the
consequences of his doctrine, if true; the others explaining, by
separate reference to his two arguments, why I conceive it to be false.

(1.) If there is no trace in nature of the moral attributes of God,
there can be no disclosure of them in Scripture. The character of the
Revealer is our only guarantee for the truth and excellence of the
Revelation: and if his character is antecedently unknown, if there is
nothing to preclude the idea of his being deceitful and malignant, how
can we be assured that his communication is not a seduction and a lie?
It is not the præternatural rank, but the just and holy mind, of a
celestial Being, that entitles his messages to reception: and surely it
is this alone which, in our opponents’ own system, makes the whole
difference between the suggestions of Satan and the inspiration of God.
But let us hear, in this matter, the judgment of one who adorned the
English church in times when solidity of thought and truth of sentiment
were still in esteem among her clergy. Archbishop Tillotson observes;
“Unless the knowledge of God and his essential perfections be natural, I
do not see what sufficient and certain foundation there can be of
revealed religion. For unless we naturally know God to be a Being of all
perfection, and consequently that whatever he says is true, I cannot see
what divine revelation can signify. For God’s revealing or declaring
such a thing to us, is no necessary argument that it is so, unless
antecedently to this revelation, we be possessed firmly with this
principle, that whatever God says is true. And whatever is known
antecedently to revelation, must be known by natural light, and by
reasonings and deductions from natural principles. I might further add
to this argument, that the _only standard and measure to judge of divine
revelations_, and to distinguish between what are true, and what are
counterfeit, are the _natural notions which men have of God, and of his
essential perfections_.”[399] And elsewhere, still more explicitly; “The
strongest and surest reasonings in religion are grounded upon the
essential perfections of God; so that even divine revelation itself doth
suppose these for its foundation, and can signify nothing to us, unless
these be first known and believed. Unless we be first persuaded of the
providence of God, and his particular care of mankind, why should we
believe that he would make any revelation of himself to men? Unless it
be naturally known to us, that God is true, what foundation is there for
the belief of his word? And what signifies the laws and promises of God,
unless natural light do first assure us of his sovereign authority and
faithfulness? So that _the principles of natural religion, are the
foundation of that which is revealed_; and therefore in reason nothing
can be admitted to be a revelation from God, which plainly contradicts
his essential perfection; and consequently if any pretends divine
revelation for this doctrine, that God hath from all eternity absolutely
decreed the eternal ruin of the greatest part of mankind, without any
respect to the sins and demerits of men, I am as certain that this
doctrine cannot be of God, as I am sure that God is good and just;
because this grates upon the notion that mankind have of goodness and
justice. This is that which _no good man would do_, and _therefore_
cannot be believed of infinite goodness; and therefore if an _Apostle_
or _Angel from heaven_ teach any doctrine which plainly overthrows the
goodness and justice of God, let him be accursed. For every man hath
greater assurance that God is good and just, than he can have of any
subtle speculations about predestination and the decrees of God.”[400]

It is somewhat curious, that in the position which they have assumed
with respect to natural religion, our reverend opponents are allying
themselves with Socinus: and that, in answering them, I should find
myself citing the words of an Archbishop of their own church in direct
reply to this great heresiarch. On the adjoining page to the first from
which I have quoted, Tillotson says, “God is naturally known to men: the
contrary whereof Socinus positively maintains, though therein he be
forsaken by most of his followers,—an opinion, in my judgment, very
unworthy of one who, not without reason, was esteemed so great a master
of reason; and (though I believe he did not see it) undermining the
strongest and surest foundation of all religion, which, when the natural
notions of God are once taken away, will certainly want its best
support. Besides that, by denying any natural knowledge of God and his
essential perfections, he freely gives away one of the most plausible
grounds of opposing the doctrine of the Trinity.” That which Socinus
could afford “freely to _give_ away,” our reverend opponents, it seems,
find it necessary violently to _take_ away.[401]

(2.) The _arguments_ by which Mr. James endeavours to justify his
repudiation of the primary sentiments of unrevealed religion, might be
sufficiently answered by a reference to any work treating of natural
theology, from the Memorabilia of Socrates to the last Bridgewater
Treatise. But as a phrase occurring in my first lecture appears to have
been concerned in their production, it is incumbent on me to show where
their fallacy lies.

The lecturer’s reasoning stands thus: The universe is a material
structure; and so is a cathedral; but a cathedral gives no report of the
moral character of its architect: neither, therefore, does the
universe:—an excellent example, when reduced to form, of the violation
of the first general rule of the syllogism, forbidding an undistributed
middle term.

Did it never occur to our reverend opponent that “the material
structures of the universe” are of various kinds, not all of them
resembling a cathedral; nay, that he himself (not being able “to sit in
a thimble,” or even “in the smallest compass imaginable,” “without
inconvenience from want of room,”)[402] is a “material structure,” in
one part of his human constitution?—a circumstance which might have
suggested the distinction between organized and unorganized nature.
Admitting even (what is by no means true) that the arrangements of the
latter terminate, like the design of a minster, in the mere production
of beauty, and indicate only genius and skill, the contrivances of the
former fulfil their end in the creation of happiness in the animal
world, and the maintenance of a retributive discipline in human life:
results which are the appropriate fruit and expression of benevolence
and equity. Even the beauty of creation, however, cannot be attributed
to sentiments as little moral in their character, as those which may
actuate the human artist; for He who has called into being whatever is
lovely and glorious, has created also percipient minds to behold it, and
transmute it from a material adjustment into a mental possession.

It is not even true that a work of art, like a cathedral, expresses no
moral quality. The individual builder’s character, indeed, it may not
reveal. But no architect ever produced a cathedral; he is but the tool
wielded by the spirit of his age; and Phidias could no more have
designed York Minster, than the associated masons could have adorned the
Parthenon. Ages must contribute to the origination of such works: and
when they appear, they embody, not indistinctly, some of the great
sentiments which possess the period of their birth.

(3.) The mixture of good and evil in the world is said to confuse our
reasonings respecting the Divine Being, by presenting us with opposite
reports of his character.

This argument is evidently inconsistent with the former. While _that_
declared the _silence_ of creation on the moral attributes of its
Author, this affirms its _double_ (and therefore doubtful) _speech_.
After all, then, there _are_ phenomena which depose to the character of
the Creator, if we can only interpret their attestation aright.

The rules for the treatment of conflicting evidence are plain and
intelligible; nor is there any reason why they should not be applied to
the great problems of natural religion. The _preponderant_ testimony
being permitted to determine our convictions, the evils and inequalities
of the world cannot disturb our faith in the benevolence and holiness of
God; but must stand over, as a residue of unreduced phenomena, to be
hereafter brought under the dominion of that law of love, which the
visible systematic arrangements of Providence show to be _general_.

Happily, no sceptical reasonings, like those on which I am
animadverting, can permanently prevent the natural sentiments of men
from asserting their supremacy. To use the words of Bishop Butler, “_Our
whole nature_ leads us to ascribe _all moral perfection_ to God, and to
deny all imperfection of him. And this will for ever be a practical
proof of his moral character, to such as will consider what a practical
proof is; _because it is the voice of God speaking in us_.”[403]

From the opposite appearances of good and evil in the world, Mr. James
derives an argument against the Unity of God, and affirms that “reason
thinks it _more reasonable_ to admit the existence of two almighty and
independent Beings, the one eternally good, the other eternally
evil.”[404] If the lecturer’s “_reason_” really recommends to him such
extraordinary conclusions, and insists on patronizing the Manichean
heresy, the intellectual faculty may well be in bad theological repute
with him. The constant origin of pain and enjoyment, good and evil, from
the _very same arrangements and structures_, renders the partition of
the creative work between two antagonistic principles not very easy of
conception; and it yet remains to be explained, how the laws which
produce the breeze can proceed from one Being, and those which speed the
hurricane from another; how hunger can have one author, and the
refreshment of food another; how the power of _right_ moral choice can
be the gift of God, and that of _wrong_ moral choice of a Demon.

The reverend lecturer attempts to weaken the argument from the unity of
the creation to that of the Creator. His eccentric remarks on comets I
must leave to the consideration of astronomers. The rest of the argument
is entitled to such reply as the following words of Robert Hall may give
to it. “To prove the unity of this great Being, in opposition to a
plurality of Gods, it is not necessary to have recourse to metaphysical
abstractions. It is sufficient to observe, that the notion of more than
one author of nature is inconsistent with that harmony of design which
pervades her works; that it solves no appearances, is supported by no
evidence, and serves no purpose but to embarrass and perplex our
conceptions.”[405]

_Trinitarian and Unitarian Ideas of Justice._

It is only natural that the parable of the Prodigal Son should be no
favourite with those, who deny the unconditional mercy of God. The place
which this divine tale occupies in the Unitarian theology appears to be
filled, in the orthodox scheme, by the story of Zaleucus, king of the
Locrians; which has been appealed to in the present controversy by both
the Lecturers on the Atonement, and seems to be the only endurable
illustration presented, even by Pagan history, of the execution of
vicarious punishment. This monarch had passed a law, condemning
adulterers to the loss of both eyes. His own son was convicted of the
crime: and to satisfy at once the claims of law and of clemency, the
royal parent “commanded one of his own eyes to be pulled out, and one of
his son’s.” Is it too bold a heresy to confess, that there seems to me
something heathenish in this example, and that, as an exponent of the
Divine character, I more willingly revere the Father of the prodigal,
than the father of the adulterer?

Without entering, however, into any comparison between the Locrian and
the Galilean parable, I would observe, that the vicarious theory
receives no illustration from this fragment of ancient history. There is
no analogy between the cases, except in the violation of truth and
wisdom which both exhibit; and whatever we are instructed to admire in
Zaleucus, will be found, on close inspection, to be absent from the
orthodox representation of God. We pity the Grecian king, who had made a
law without foresight of its application, and so sympathize with his
desire to evade it, that any quibble which legal ingenuity can devise
for this purpose, passes with slight condemnation: casuistry refuses to
be severe with a man implicated in such a difficulty. But the Creator
and Legislator of the human race, having perfect knowledge of the
future, can never be surprised into a similar perplexity; or ever pass a
law at one time, which at another he desires to evade. Even were it so,
there would seem to be less that is unworthy of his moral perfection, in
saying plainly, with the ancient Hebrews, that he “repented of the evil
he thought to do,” and said, “it shall not be;” than in ascribing to him
a device for preserving consistency, in which no one capable of
appreciating veracity can pretend to discern any sincere fulfilment of
the law. However barbarous the idea of Divine “repentance,” it is at
least ingenuous. Nor does this incident of Zaleucus and his son present
any parallel to the alleged relation between the Divine Father who
receives, and the Divine Son who gives, the satisfaction for human
guilt. The Locrian king took a part of the penalty himself, and left the
remainder where it was due; but the Sovereign Law-giver of Calvinism
puts the whole upon another. To sustain the analogy, Zaleucus should
have permitted an innocent son to have both his eyes put out, and the
convicted adulterer to escape.

The doctrine of Atonement has introduced among Trinitarians a mode of
speaking respecting God, which grates most painfully against the
reverential affections due to him. His nature is dismembered into a
number of attributes, foreign to each other, and preferring rival
claims; the Divine tranquillity appears as the equilibrium of opposing
pressures,—the Divine administration as a resultant from the collision
of hostile forces. Goodness pleads for that which holiness forbids; and
the Paternal God would do many a mercy, did the Sovereign God allow. The
idea of a conflict or embarrassment in the Supreme Mind being thus
introduced, and the believer being haunted by the feeling of some
tremendous difficulty affecting the Infinite government, the vicarious
economy is brought forward as the relief, the solution of the whole
perplexity; the union, by a blessed compromise, of attributes that could
never combine in any scheme before. The main business of theology is
made to consist, in stating the conditions, and expounding the solution,
of this imaginary problem. The cardinal difficulty is thought to be, the
reconciliation of Justice and Mercy; and, as the one is represented
under the image of a Sovereign, the other under that of a Father, the
question assumes this form: how can the same being at every moment
possess both these characters, without abandoning any function or
feeling appropriate to either? how, especially, can the Judge remit,—it
is beyond his power; yet, how can the Parent punish to the uttermost?—it
is contrary to his nature.

All this difficulty is merely fictitious; arising out of the
determination to make out that God is both wholly Judge, and wholly
Father; from an anxiety, that is, to adhere to two metaphors, as
applicable, in every particular, to the Divine Being. It is evident that
both must be, to a great extent, inappropriate; and in nothing surely is
the impropriety more manifest, than in the assertion that, as Sovereign,
God is naturally bound to execute laws which, nevertheless, it would be
desirable to remit, or change in their operation. Whatever painful
necessities the imperfection of human legislation and judicial procedure
may impose, the Omniscient Ruler can make no law which he will not to
all eternity, and with entire consent of his whole nature, deem it well
to execute. This is the Unitarian answer to the constant question, “How
can God forgive in defiance of his own law?” It is not in defiance of
his laws: every one of which will be fulfilled to the uttermost, in
conformity with his first intent; but nowhere has he declared that he
will not forgive. All justice consists in treating moral agents
according to their character; the inexorability of human law arises
solely from the imperfection with which it can attain this end, and is
not the essence, but the alloy, of equity: but God, who searches and
controls the heart, exercises that perfect justice, which permits the
penal suffering to depart only with the moral guilt; and pardons, not by
cancelling any sentence, but by obeying his eternal purpose to meet the
wanderer returning homeward, and give his blessing to the restored. Only
by such restoration can any past guilt be effaced. The thoughts,
emotions, and sufferings of sin, once committed, are woven into the
fabric of the soul; and are as incapable of being absolutely obliterated
thence and put back into non-existence, as moments of being struck from
the past, or the parts of space from infinitude. Herein we behold alike
“the goodness and the severity of God;” and adore in him not the balance
of contrary tendencies, but the harmony of consentaneous perfections.
How plainly does experience show that, if his personal unity be given
up, his moral unity cannot be preserved!

The representation of God as a Creditor, to whom his responsible
creatures are in debt to the amount of their moral obligations, is no
less unfit to serve as the foundation of serious reasonings, than the
idea of him as a Sovereign. As a loose analogy, likely to produce a
vivid impression on minds filled with ideas borrowed from the
institution of property, it unavoidably and innocently occurs to us; but
to force any doctrinal sentiments from it, is to strain it beyond its
capabilities. Mr. Buddicom describes it as a favourite with the
Unitarians: “our opponents assert, that sins are to be regarded as
_debts_ and as _debts only_.”[406] I will venture to affirm that no
Unitarian who heard this believed his own ears, till he saw it in print;
so incredibly great must be the ignorance of Unitarian theology which
could dictate the statement. The sentiment attributed to us is one,
against which our whole body of moral doctrine is one systematic
protest, and which has place in our arguments against the vicarious
scheme, _only because it is the fundamental idea, on which that scheme
is usually declared to rest_. In one of the most recent and deservedly
popular Unitarian publications on this subject, I find a long note
devoted to the destruction of this pecuniary analogy, which, the Author
observes, “seems very incomplete and unsatisfactory. Punishment is
compared to a debt, supposed to be incurred by the commission of the
offence. To a certain degree there is a resemblance between the two
things, which may be the foundation of a _metaphor_; but when we proceed
to _argue_ upon this metaphor, we fall into a variety of errors.”[407]
That orthodoxy does incessantly “argue upon this metaphor,” is
notorious; and the present controversy is not deficient in specimens.
“All that the creature can accomplish is a debt due to the
Creator,”[408] says Mr. James, who reasons out the mercantile view of
redemption with an unshrinking precision, unequalled since the days of
Shylock; who insists on “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life,”
and condemns any alteration (of course, our Lord’s) of this rule, as
“false charity, or mistaken compassion;”[409] who inquires whether, in
the payment of redemption, an angel might not go for a number of men,
and decides in the negative, because “the highest created angel in
existence” (having as much as he can do for himself) “could not produce
the smallest amount of supererogatory obedience or merit to transfer to
a fellow angel, or to man;”[410] and who, in reply to the question,
“What price will God accept for the lives that are justly sentenced to
eternal death?” says, “the answer to this is very simple: he will accept
nothing but what will be a real equivalent—a full compensation—an
adequate price.”[411] In what bible of Moloch or of Mammon all this is
found, I know not; sure I am, it was never learned at the feet of
Christ.

Unitarians object to the cruelty and injustice attributed to the Eternal
Father, in laying upon the innocent Jesus the punishment of guilty men.
Mr. Buddicom’s reply, though not new, is remarkable. “Do we, however,
assert anything as to the _fact_ of our Lord’s sufferings, which they
who deny his atonement do not also assert? If, then, it be a truth
historical, that he did suffer through life, agonize in the garden, and
die on the cross, does it not appear much greater cruelty in God, to
impose those sufferings, which Jesus is admitted to have undergone,
without any benefit to the transgressor, or any vindication of his own
glory?”[412]

I had always thought, and still think, that our Trinitarian friends _do_
assert a great deal “as to the _fact_” (_i.e._, the _amount_ and
_intrinsic character_, apart from the _effects_) “of our Lord’s
sufferings, which we cannot admit. A human being, says the Unitarian,
died on the cross, with such suffering as a perfect human being may
endure.” Will Mr. Buddicom be content with this description of “the
_fact_?” and does he merely wish to subjoin, that on the death of “this
man,” God _took occasion_ to forgive _all men_ who are to be saved at
all? If so, I admit that the imputation of cruelty is groundless; and
have only to observe, that there is no perceptible relation of cause and
effect between the occasion and the boon; and that the cross becomes
simply the date, the chronological sign, of a Divine volition,
arbitrarily attached to that point of human history. But then, how can
Mr. Buddicom defend (as he does) the phrase “_blood of God_”?[413]
Theology can perform strange feats, and to its sleight of words nothing
is impossible. The doctrine of the _communication of properties_ between
the two natures of our Lord, comes in to relieve the difficulty; and
having established that whatever is true of _either_ nature may be
affirmed of _Christ_, and by inference, even of the _other_, it proves
the propriety of saying, both that the Divine nature cannot suffer, and
yet that God bled.[414] Heterodoxy, however, in its perverseness, still
thinks with Le Clerc of this κοινωνία ἰδιωμάτων, that it is “as
intelligible, as if we were to say, there is a circle so united with a
triangle, that the circle has the properties of the triangle, and the
triangle those of the circle.”[415]

_The reading in Acts_ xx. 28.

No competent critic, I apprehend, can read without surprise Mr.
Buddicom’s note (H.) on the reading of this verse. The slight manner in
which Griesbach is set aside, to make way for the authority of critical
editions of the N. T. since his time; the vague commendation of the
edition of Dr. Scholtz, “which, it may well be hoped, leaves us little
more to expect or desire,”—as if there were nothing peculiar or
controverted in the critical principles of that work; the citation of a
passage from this Roman Catholic editor, in which the critic becomes the
theologian, and makes use of his own reading of Θεοῦ to prove “that
Christ is God;” together with the statement that the reading is of _no
doctrinal importance_; combine to render this a remarkable piece of
criticism. If the learned Lecturer had _defended_ his dissent from
Griesbach, or attempted to invalidate the reasoning of that Editor’s
elaborate note on the passage, some materials for consideration and
argument would have been afforded. But no reason is assigned for the
preference of Θεοῦ over κυρίου, except that Dr. Scholtz adopts it, and
says nothing about it; though Griesbach rejects it, and says a great
deal about it; and very conclusively too, in the opinion of most
scholars, not excepting Mr. Byrth. Surely the paradoxical preference
which Scholtz gives to the Byzantine recension is not a reason for
hoping that he has left us nothing more to expect, in the determination
of the text of the N. T.; still less is it a reason why his readings,
simply because they are his, should supersede Griesbach’s;—from whom, I
submit, no sober critic should venture to depart, without at least
intimating the _grounds_ of his judgment. I have not seen the critical
edition of the learned Roman Catholic; but unless its Prolegomena
contain some much better reasons than are adduced in his
“Biblisch-kritische Reise,” for his attachment to the Constantinopolitan
family of manuscripts, it may be safely affirmed, that Griesbach will no
more be superseded by Scholtz, than he was anticipated by Matthæi.

The text in question is not one, on the reading of which Griesbach
expresses his opinion with any hesitation. “Ex his omnibus luculenter
apparet, pro lectione θεοῦ ne unicum quidem militare codicem, qui sive
vetustate, sive internâ bonitate suâ testis idonei et incorrupti laude
ornari queat. Non reperitur, nisi in libris recentioribus, iisdemque vel
penitus contemnendis, vel misere, multis saltem in locis,
interpolatis.”—“Quomodo igitur, salvis criticæ artis legibus, lectio
θεοῦ, utpote omni auctoritate justa destituta, defendi queat, equidem
haud intelligo.” In the face of this decision, Mr. Buddicom reads θεοῦ:
and does any one then believe, that in Unitarians alone theological bias
influences the choice of a reading?

The attempt to elicit from the word κυρίου the same argument for the
Deity of Christ, which might be derived from the reading θεοῦ, I confess
myself unable to comprehend. Does Mr. Buddicom intend to assert, that
when any person is called κύριος (Lord) in the N. T., it means that he
is Jehovah? Or, when this is denoted, is there some peculiarity of
grammatical usage, indicating the fact? If so, it is of moment that this
should be pointed out, and illustrated by examples: the idiom not being
adequately described by saying that “the word” is “_put in the form of
an unqualified and unequalled preference_.”

_Archbishop Magee’s controversial Character._

In the year 1815 a discussion arose out of the general controversy on
the doctrine of the Trinity, respecting the proper use of the word
UNITARIAN. Those who were anxious to be designated by this name were
divided in opinion as to the latitude with which it should be employed.
One class proposed to limit it to believers in the simple humanity of
our Lord, and to exclude from it all who held his pre-existence, from
the lowest Arian to the highest Athanasian. Another class protested
against this restriction; suggested that, both by its construction and
its usage, the word primarily referred, not to the _nature of Christ_,
but to the _personality of the Godhead_; that as Trinitarians denoted,
by the prefix (Tri) to their name, the _three persons_ of their Deity,
so by the prefix (_Un_) should Unitarians express the _one person_ of
_theirs_; that in no other way could the numerical antithesis, promised
to the ear, be afforded to the mind; and accordingly that under the
title _Unitarian_ should be included all Christians who directed their
worship to one personal God, whatever they might think of the nature of
Christ. It is evident that, in this latter sense, the name must
comprehend a much larger class than in the former. The discussion
between the two parties was conducted in the pages of the Monthly
Repository, at that time the organ of the English Unitarian theology.

Meanwhile the defenders of orthodoxy were not indifferent to the subject
of debate; nor at all more agreed about it than their theological
opponents. The majority regarded the word Unitarian as a _creditable_
name, which was by no means to be abandoned to a set of heretics,
hitherto held up to opprobrium by the title of _Socinian_. They
accordingly proposed to consider it as expressing the belief in _One
God_ (without reference to the number of persons), in contradistinction
to the belief in _many Gods_; so that its opposite should be, not as the
analogy of language seemed to require, _Trinitarian_, but _Polytheist_.
Thus defined, the appellation belonged to Trinitarians as well as to
others; and the assumption of it, by those who dissented from the
doctrine of the Trinity, was construed into a charge of Tritheism
against the orthodox. Another party, however, comprising especially
Archbishop Magee in the church, and the High Arians out of it, treated
the name as one, not of honour, but of _disgrace_;—were anxious to fix
it exclusively on Mr. Belsham’s school of humanitarians, and to rescue
the believers in the pre-existence of Christ, of every shade, from its
pollution;—and affected to regard every extension of it to these, as a
disingenuous trick, designed to swell the appearance of numbers, and to
act as “a decoy” for drawing “to Mr. Belsham” all who were “against
Athanasius.”[416] And so the poor Unitarians could please nobody, and
were in imminent danger of being altogether anonymous. If they did not
_extend_ their name so as take in every church, Athanasian and all, they
were guilty of false imputation on Trinitarians, and of monopolizing an
honour which was no property of theirs. If they did not _narrow_ it to
“Mr. Belsham’s class,” they were accused of “equivocation,” and of
cunningly dragging the harmless Arians into participation of their
disgrace. If they _denied_ that the whole Church of England was
Unitarian, they committed an act of impudent exclusion; if they
_affirmed_ that Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton were Unitarian, they were
chargeable with a no less impudent assumption, and rebuked for
“posthumous proselytism.”

Of the three possible meanings of the word, the Humanitarian, the
Uni-personal, and the Monotheistic,—Mr. Aspland ably and successfully
vindicated the second; in opposition to Mr. Norris, a Trinitarian
controversialist, who insisted on the third, and declared he would call
his opponents _Socinians_; and amid the reproaches of Archbishop Magee,
who clung to the first, and denounced the wider application as a
“dishonest” “management of the term.” With these things in mind, let the
reader attend to the following passage from that prelate’s celebrated
work:

“How great are the advantages of a well-chosen name! _Mr. Aspland_, in
his warm recommendation of the continuance of the use of the word
_Unitarian_, in that ambiguous sense in which it had already done so
much good to the cause, very justly observes, from Dr. South, that ‘the
generality of mankind is _wholly_ and _absolutely_ governed by _words_
and _names_;’ and that ‘he who will set up for a skilful manager of the
rabble, _so long as they have but ears to hear_, needs never enquire
whether they have any understanding whereby to judge: but with two or
three popular empty words, well tuned and humoured, may whistle them
backwards and forwards, upwards and downwards, till he is weary; and get
upon their backs when he is so.’ _Month. Rep._ vol. x. p. 481.—And what
does _Mr. Aspland_ deduce from all this? Why, neither more nor less than
this,—that the name _Unitarian_ must never be given up; but all possible
changes rung upon it, let the opinions of those who bear that name be
ever so various and contradictory.”[417]

Now what does the reader think of Mr. Aspland? He despises him, as the
deliberate proposer of an imposture; as one who sets up for “a skilful
manager of the rabble,” and who argues for the name “Unitarian,”
_because_ it may enable his party to “get upon the backs” of the
multitude. The Archbishop, I presume, _means_ to leave this impression.
Let us look then to the facts.

The quotation is from Mr. Aspland’s “Plea for Unitarian Dissenters.” The
author is expostulating with Mr. Norris, who had vowed still to fasten
the term _Socinian_ on dissentients from the doctrine of the Trinity;
and is urging the impropriety of irritating a religious body by giving
them a disowned and confessedly unsuitable designation. Mr. Aspland
introduces his reference to Dr. South by the following passage:

“It is not without design that you cling to a known error. The name of
Socinian is refused by us; this is one reason why an ungenerous
adversary may choose to give it: and again, the term having been used
(with some degree of propriety) at the first appearance of this class of
Unitarians, which was at a period when penal laws were not a dead
letter, and when theological controversies were personal quarrels, it is
associated in books with a set of useful phrases such as _pestilent
heretics_, _wretched blasphemers_, and the like, which suit the
convenience of writers who have an abundance of enmity but a lack of
argument, and who, whilst they are reduced to the necessity of
borrowing, are not secured by their good taste or sense of decorum from
taking, in loan, the excrescences of defunct authors; this is a second
reason why the name ‘Socinian’ is made to linger in books, long after
Socinians have departed from the stage.”

Then follows the note from which Archbishop Magee has quoted: but from
which he has omitted the parts inclosed in brackets.

[“Once more, I must beg leave to refer you to Dr. South, for an
appropriate observation or two, _on the fatal imposture and force of
words_.]

“‘The generality of mankind is wholly and absolutely governed by _words_
and names; _[without_, nay, for the most part, even _against_ the
knowledge men have of things. The multitude or common route, like a
drove of sheep, or an herd of oxen, may be managed by any noise, or cry,
which their drivers shall accustom them to.

“‘And] he who will set up for a skilful manager of the rabble, so long
_as they have but ears to hear_, needs never enquire whether they have
any understanding whereby to judge: but with two or three popular, empty
words,’ ‘well-tuned and humoured, may whistle them backwards and
forwards, upwards and downwards, till he is weary; and get upon their
backs when he is so.’”[418]

And now, may I not ask, what does the reader think of Archbishop Magee?
Mr. Aspland indignantly CONDEMNS the “imposture” practised by false
names; and, by a garbled quotation he is held up as RESORTING to it. He
_really says_ to _his opponents_, “Call us Socinians no more, for you
must know it is unjust;” he is _represented as saying to his friends_,
“We will never cease to call ourselves Unitarians, for it is a capital
trick.” And thus, by scoring out and interlining, his own expostulation
against a base policy is metamorphosed into an indictment, charging him
with the very same. Mr. Byrth and Mr. M‘Neile are men, as I believe, of
honourable minds: and the latter has rebuked, as they deserve, “garbled
quotations.” I ask them to acquit me of “outraging the memory of
departed greatness.”

“My respected opponents know as well as I do,” “that dishonest
criticism, as well as dishonesty of every kind, consists not in the
number of the acts which are perpetrated, but in the unprincipled
disposition which led to the perpetration.”[419] I might therefore be
content with the example of “misrepresentation the most black” which I
have given. But from the list which lies before me, I think it right to
take one or two instances more, admitting of brief exposure.

In the Authorized Version, 1 Cor. xv. 47, stands thus; “The first man
_is_ of the earth, earthy: the second man _is_ the Lord from heaven;”
the substantive verb in both parts of the verse having nothing, as the
Italics indicate, to correspond with it in the original; but being
inserted at the discretion of the translators to complete the sense.
From the second clause Trinitarians usually derive an argument for the
pre-existence of Christ, conceiving that it teaches the _origin of our
Lord from heaven_. Some of their best commentators, however, understand
the clause as referring not to Christ’s _past_ entrance into this world,
but to his _future_ coming to judgment. Thus Archbishop Newcome renders,
“The second man _will be_ [the Lord] from heaven.” And Dr. Whitby
paraphrases, ”The second man is the Lord [_descending_] from heaven [_to
raise our bodies, and advance them to that place_];” and he defends this
interpretation in a note.[420] Mr. Belsham adopts this rendering, both
in the “Improved Version” and in his “Calm Enquiry,” giving, with the
sanction of the authorities I have cited, a _past_ verb to the first
clause, a _future_ verb to the second. The admirable Newcome and Whitby,
then, must share the Archbishop’s rebuke, for “the total inadmissibility
of this _arbitrary_ rendering of the Unitarians, and the _grossness_ of
their _endeavour to pervert the sense of Scripture_.” “Here,” he
observes, “we have a change of tense, which not only has no foundation
in either the Greek or Latin text, but is _in direct opposition to
both_; since in both the perfect sameness of the corresponding clauses
obviously determines the sameness of the tense.”[421] Of the
“unscholarlike exaggeration” of this criticism I say nothing, merely
wishing it to be observed in passing, that Mr. Belsham’s version is not
of Unitarian origin, and proves no doctrinal bias, much less any
“dishonesty.”

But a question arises respecting the text, as well as the translation,
of this verse; the phrase “the Lord,” in the second clause, being marked
by Griesbach as probably to be omitted; and the word “heavenly” to be
appended at the close. The original of the common translation stands
thus: Ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος, ἐκ γῆς χοϊκός· ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος, ὁ κύριος ἐξ
οὐρανοῦ. With the probable emendations the latter clause would read
thus: ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ ὁ οὐράνιος: and Archbishop
Newcome’s translation, conformed to this text, becomes that of Mr.
Belsham; “The first man _was_ from the ground, earthy: the second man
_will be_ from heaven, heavenly.”

There are then two points to be determined respecting this passage—the
_reading_, and the _rendering_, which, in this case, is equivalent to
the _interpretation_ also. Mr. Belsham, in his Calm Inquiry, treats of
_both_; and is accused by the Archbishop, in the following passage, of
discussing the “unimportant matter” of the _text_ with great pomp; while
adducing, _in favour of his translation and the future tense_, no
authority _except the Vulgate_: “primus homo de terra, terrenus:
secundus homo de cœlo, cælestis.” The indictment and argument run
thus:—“The grand point to be established for the Unitarians is, as we
have seen, the use of the _future_ in the second clause of the
text:—‘the second man WILL BE from heaven:’—for, if we read ‘WAS from
heaven,’ _actum est_! it is all over with the Unitarians; inasmuch as,
in this passage, the origin of the BEING, without any possible pretence
as to the _doctrines_, is unequivocally the subject. How does _Mr.
Belsham_ proceed? Having made a good deal of flourish, as the Improved
Version had also done before him, about the words κύριος and οὐράνιος;
having also lumped together some irrelevant matter about the Polish
Socinians and _Dr. Price_; and having observed somewhat upon the
interpretation of _Newcome_, _Whitby_, and _Alexander;_ having, in
short, appeared to say a good deal, whilst he took care to preserve a
profound silence throughout (as the Improved Version also has done,)
respecting any arguments in favour of the _future tense_ in the second
clause—the single point on which the entire question rests,—he all of a
sudden, very calmly and composedly asserts, ‘The Vulgate renders the
text, “The first man was of the earth, earthy. The second man will be
from heaven, heavenly.”’ (Calm Inq. p. 121.[422]) He then triumphantly
concludes, and all is settled. In this manner, one text after another,
of those that proclaim our Lord’s pre-existence, is extinguished by the
_Calm Inquirer_ and his coadjutors. And so the cause of Socinian
expurgation goes forward.

“Perhaps, in the annals of dishonest controversy, another instance like
this is not to be found. A discussion of unimportant matter is _busily_
kept up: the main point of difference, and in truth the only one
deserving of attention, the _change of tense_, is passed over, as if it
were a thing not at all in dispute: the Vulgate is then quoted, _in
direct opposition to the truth_, as reading the words ‘WAS’ and ‘WILL
BE’ in the two corresponding clauses: and thus, indirectly, the false
rendering of the text by the Unitarians is sustained by a false
quotation from the Vulgate; and by a quotation which the author, if his
memory had lasted from one page to the other, must have known to be
false; since, in the preceding page, he had himself cited the very words
of the Vulgate:—‘Primus homo de terra, terrenus; secundus homo de cœlo,
cælestis:’—in which, words there is not only no justification of the
change from WAS to WILL BE; but there is, on the contrary, as in the
original Greek, a declaration, as strong as the analogies of language
will admit, that the tense employed in the first clause must pass
unchanged into the second. In a word, there is given by the Vulgate
itself a direct contradiction to the report which is made of it by the
_Calm Inquirer_. The man of ‘sound understanding,’ however, whom he
addressed in _English_ on the one page, being possibly not exactly
acquainted with what was contained in the _Latin_ on the other, and
being consequently unaware that his author was imposing on him a false
translation, would of course be fully satisfied on the authority of the
Vulgate (more especially as so much had been said to leave the general
impression of uncertainty as to the true reading of the _Greek_ text,
and the consequent opinion, that the Vulgate was the only ancient
authority to be relied on,) that in this passage could be found no proof
of our Lord’s pre-existence! What are we to think of the cause that
needs such support; and what of the interests that can attract such
supporters?”[423]

We are to understand, then, that Mr. Belsham’s _only authority for the
tenses of his version_ is a wilful mistranslation of the Vulgate; and
that he cunningly conceals from the mere English reader the circumstance
that the Vulgate, having no verb, has no tenses. Now, as to the last
point, he _distinctly informs_ his reader that _there is no verb_ in the
Latin; and as to the former, _he never appeals to the_ RENDERING _of the
Vulgate at all but to the_ READING _only_. “How can this be?” I shall be
asked; “for the Archbishop cites his words, ‘The Vulgate RENDERS the
text,’ &c.” True, _but the Archbishop quotes him falsely_; and the real
words are, “The Vulgate READS the text,” &c. Let the original and the
citation appear side by side.

_Mr. Belsham’s words._ _Archbishop Magee’s quotation._

“The Vulgate READS the text, ‘The “The Vulgate RENDERS the text, ‘The
first man _was_ of the earth, first man was of the earth, earthy.
earthly. The second man _will be_ The second man will be from heaven,
from heaven, heavenly.’ heavenly,’”[424]

“This is not improbably the TRUE
READING.”

The verbs, in both clauses, Mr. Belsham has printed in italics, to
indicate (in conformity with the usual practice in his work, and the
Improved Version, as well as in our common translation) the absence of
any corresponding words in the Latin text. This circumstance, which
destroys the whole accusation, his accuser has suppressed.

And as to the “preserving a profound silence throughout respecting any
arguments in favour of the future tense in the second clause,” it so
happens that the “somewhat” which is observed “upon the interpretation
of Newcome, Whitby, and Alexander,” is simply an appeal to these
authorities on this very matter of the future tense,—“the single point
on which the entire question rests.”

On the whole, can our upright and learned opponents tell, whether “in
the annals of dishonest controversy, another instance like” the
foregoing “is to be found?” I can assure them, that from the same work,
I could produce many more.

In our present controversy, our Rev. opponents have been misled by their
reliance on this unscrupulous adversary of the Unitarians: and by not
referring to his pages, have taken his heavy responsibilities on
themselves. In the first Lecture of the series, Mr. Ould has represented
Dr. Priestley as saying, that the sacred writers produced “lame
accounts, improper quotations, and inconclusive reasonings.”[425] Dr.
Magee has exhibited this sentence as a citation from Priestley’s 12th
Letter to Mr. Burn;[426] the fact being, that he wrote only six letters
to Mr. Burn; and that _neither in these, nor anywhere else, is such a
sentence to be found_. The first phrase, indeed (“lame account”) was
once applied by Dr. Priestley to the early chapters in Genesis; but
deliberately retracted with an expression of regret that it had been
used. Let the learned prelate pass sentence on himself: he says, “It is
surely _a gross falsification of his author_, to give, _as one continued
quotation_ from him (as the established meaning of the form here
employed, unequivocally implies), that which is an arbitrary selection
of words drawn violently together from a lengthened context.”[427] I can
assure our respected opponents, that their Lectures contain other
citations, drawn from the same source, which, after the most careful
search, I believe to be no less false. And is not an ungenerous use made
of obnoxious writings, when we find enumerated and quoted among
Unitarian authors, _Evanson_, whose scepticism received its most
effectual replies from Priestley and his friends; and _Gagneius_, who
was an orthodox professor of the Sorbonne, and preacher to Francis the
First?

For other instances of Archbishop Magee’s flagrant injustice and
misrepresentation, I must refer to the “Examination of his charges
against Unitarians and Unitarianism,” by my learned and venerated friend
Dr. Carpenter, who has found it only too easy to fill a volume with the
exposure of a mere portion of them. I have purposely taken fresh
examples, not hitherto noticed, so far as I know, and it may be supposed
that the earlier gleaning by Dr. Carpenter would naturally yield the
most remarkable results; so that the cases now adduced cannot be thought
to be _peculiarly_ unfavourable specimens.

If our reverend opponents, _having read this Prelate’s work_, really
think my charge against him, of “abuse the most coarse,” an
“unwarrantable attack on the reputation of the dead,” I cannot hope to
justify myself in their estimation: there must be an irremediable
variance between their notion of “coarse abuse” and mine. I regret that
we cannot agree in a matter of taste which, to say the least, borders so
closely on morals as to be scarcely distinguishable from them, and to be
connected with the same strong feelings of approbation or disgust. With
what levity must a writer sport with moral terms, what indistinct
impressions must he have of moral qualities, who having pronounced an
opponent (I quote the language of the Archbishop of Mr. Belsham)
“_incapable of duplicity_,”[428] can yet proceed to charge him with
“artifice and dishonesty,”[429] with “_huddling up_ a matter,”[430] with
“_filching away_ a portion of evidence,”[431] with “_direct violations
of known truth_,”[432] and with “_bad faith_, unchecked by learning and
unabashed by shame!”[433] I cannot wonder at the spirit pervading Mr.
Byrth’s letter to my friend and colleague Mr. Thom, when I find that he
sees nothing coarse or abusive, but only the expression of “departed
greatness,” in accusing an opponent of “miserable stupidity,”[434] of
“downright and irremediable nonsense,”[435] of “proposing” a suggestion
“(_as he_ AVERS) with great diffidence,”[436] of furnishing
“twenty-eight pages of the most extraordinary quagmire;”[437] in begging
him to “rest assured, that to know the Greek language it must be
learned;”[438] in proclaiming that he “stands in a pillory”[439] erected
for him by a Bishop; that he belongs to “the family of Botherims in
Morals and Metaphysics,” and is “connected with that of Malaprops in
Mathematics;”[440] in ridiculing the idea of publishing his
portrait;[441] in asking him whether he has “lost his senses;”[442] and
hinting that, whereas he knows not “how to choose _between two bundles_”
of evidence, he is AN ASS.[443] Are we to consider it a condescension in
this distinguished Prelate, that he bends from his Episcopal dignity to
console the Dissenting ministers in their “contemplation of the
advantages of the national clergy,” and assures them that they have “not
only more of positive profit,” but, “in addition to this,” “the
indulgence of vanity, and the gratification of spleen,—qualities which,
time out of mind, have belonged to the family of _Dissent_;” nay,
further, that in preparation for their ministry, they have a much
lighter “outfit” “in point of expenditure,” since among Nonconformists,
in some cases at least, “the individual is his own University; confers
his own degrees and orders; and has little more difficulty in the way of
his vocation, than to find a new hat, a stout pony, and a pair of
saddle-bags.”[444] This is very smart, no doubt; but does the Church
exclude us from the Universities, that her Bishops may enjoy the
entertainment of making us their laughing-stock, and inditing lampoons
against us? Does she injure us first, that we may be insulted
afterwards?

Mr. M‘Neile speaks of the late Archbishop’s work as “a barrier in the
way of Unitarianism.”[445] It is so; and if its influence were only that
of fair argument, we should wish the barrier to stand in all its
strength. But the book has become a standard authority for every kind of
false and malignant impression respecting Unitarians, and prevents,
instead of advancing, the knowledge of what we are. To be held up as
entertaining “the _cool and deliberate purpose_ of falsifying the word
of God;”[446] as guilty of “machinations” to “subvert through _fraud_
what had been found impregnable by force;”[447] as “staking” our “very
salvation on the adoption of a reading which is against evidence;”[448]
as distinguished for “steady and immovable effrontery,”[449] and
“shameful disingenuousness;”[450] as discerning in our Lord “_that one_
HATED _form on which we are terrified to look_;”[451] as so “determined
to resist and subvert _one great truth_,” that we “set but little value
on every other,” and make a “_prevailing practice_” of “DIRECT AND
DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD:”[452] to be thus slandered by one, for whom his
station and accomplishments have procured, from the party spirit of the
age, a credit denied to any possible learning or excellence of ours;
this, being a grievous wrong to the character of Christianity as much as
to our own, we confess to be a trial hard to bear: and we may well feel
like the good man under successful calumny, which wounds himself a
little, but truth and virtue more. Meanwhile, injury may have its
compensations; and since, to prove his accusations, even this
distinguished Prelate had occasion to tamper with the evidence, we have
a fresh presumption that our cause is one, against which learning and
acuteness, under the restraints of justice, find themselves of no avail.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture VI.

Footnote 294:

Lecture, p. 450. Note.

Footnote 295:

See Note A

Footnote 296:

See Rev. H. M‘Neile’s Lecture; The Proper Deity of our Lord the only
Ground of Consistency in the Work of Redemption, pp. 339, 340.

Footnote 297:

Gen. ii. 17.

Footnote 298:

“Either he” (“the Deity of the Unitarians”) “must show no mercy, in
order to continue true; or he must show no truth, in order to exercise
mercy. If he overlook man’s guilt, _admit him to the enjoyment of his
favour, and proceed_ by corrective discipline to restore his
character, he unsettles the foundations of all equitable government,
obliterates the everlasting distinctions between right and wrong,
spreads consternation in Heaven, and proclaims impunity in Hell. Such
a God would not be worth serving. _Such_ tenderness, instead of
inspiring filial affection, would lead only to reckless
contempt.”—_Mr. M‘Neile’s Lecture_, p. 313.

Surely this is a description, not of the Unitarian, but of the
Lecturer’s own creed. It certainly is no part of his opponents’
belief, that God first admits the guilty to his favour, and _then
“proceeds”_ “to restore his character.” This arrangement, by which
pardon _precedes_ moral restoration, is that feature in the orthodox
theory of the Divine dealings against which Unitarians protest, and
which Mr. M‘Neile himself insists upon as essential throughout his
Lecture. “We think,” he says, “that _before_ man can be introduced to
the only true process of improvement, he must _first_ have forgiveness
of his guilt.” What is this “first” step of pardon, but an
“overlooking of man’s guilt;” and what is the second, of
“sanctification,” but a “restoring of character;” whether we say by
“corrective discipline,” or the “influence of the Holy Spirit,”
matters not. Is it said that the guilt is not overlooked, if Christ
endured its penalty? I ask again, whether justice regards only the
_infliction_ of suffering, or its _quantity_, without caring about its
_direction_? Was it impossible for the stern righteousness of God
freely to forgive the penitent? And how was the injustice of
liberating the guilty mended by the torments of the innocent? Here is
the verdict against sin,—“The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” And
how is this verdict executed? The soul that had sinned does _not_ die;
and one “that knew no sin” dies instead. And this is called a divine
union of _truth_ and _mercy_; being the most precise negation of both,
of which any conception can be formed. First, to hang the destinies of
all mankind upon a solitary volition of their first parents, and then
let loose a diabolic power on that volition to break it down; to
vitiate the human constitution in punishment for the fall, and yet
continue to demand obedience to the original and perfect moral law; to
assert the absolute inflexibility of that holy law, yet all the while
have in view for the offenders a method of escape, which violates
every one of its provisions, and makes it all a solemn pretence; to
forgive that which is in itself unpardonable, on condition of the
suicide of a God, is to shock and confound all notions of rectitude,
without affording even the sublimity of a savage grandeur. This will
be called “blasphemy;” and it is so; but the blasphemy is not in the
_words_, but in the _thing_.

Unitarians are falsely accused of representing God as “overlooking
man’s guilt.” They hold, that _no guilt is overlooked till it is
eradicated from the soul_; and that pardon proceeds, _pari passu_,
with sanctification.

Footnote 299:

See Note B.

Footnote 300:

Numb. xiv. 19, 20.

Footnote 301:

Jon. iii. 5-10.

Footnote 302:

Jon. iv. 10, 11.

Footnote 303:

Ps. li. 16, 17.

Footnote 304:

Is. i. 16-18.

Footnote 305:

Ezek. xxxiii. 14-16.

Footnote 306:

Matt. xix. 16-21.

Footnote 307:

Acts x. 34-44.

Footnote 308:

Acts ii. 24.

Footnote 309:

iii. 15.

Footnote 310:

iv. 10; v. 30.

Footnote 311:

iv. 2.

Footnote 312:

xxiv. 21.

Footnote 313:

Acts xiii. 30.

Footnote 314:

xvii. 18, 31.

Footnote 315:

Rom. viii. 34.

Footnote 316:

iv. 25.

Footnote 317:

iv. 24.

Footnote 318:

x. 9.

Footnote 319:

iii. 25.

Footnote 320:

Mr. Buddicom has the following note, intimating his approbation of
this rendering: “Some of the best commentators have connected ἐν τῷ
αὐτοῦ αἵματι, not with διὰ τῆς πίστεως, but with ἱλαστήριον and,
accordingly, Bishop Bull renders the passage, ‘Quem proposuit Deus
placamentum in sanguine suo per fidem.’”—_Lecture on Atonement_, p.
496.

Footnote 321:

Luke vii. 47.

Footnote 322:

John xii. 23, 24, 32.

Footnote 323:

John x. 16, 17.

Footnote 324:

Matt. xv. 24.

Footnote 325:

2 Cor. v. 15-18.

Footnote 326:

See Rom. vii. 1-4.

Footnote 327:

Gal. ii. 15.

Footnote 328:

Rom. v. 6.

Footnote 329:

Col. ii. 13; iii. 3.

Footnote 330:

Gal. iv. 4-7.

Footnote 331:

Eph. i. 7.

Footnote 332:

Rom. ix. 4.

Footnote 333:

Eph. i. 3-5.

Footnote 334:

Rom. v. 10.

Footnote 335:

Eph. i. 10.

Footnote 336:

Rom. v. 11.

Footnote 337:

Col. i. 19.

Footnote 338:

Eph. ii. 11-18.

Footnote 339:

1 Tim. ii. 1-8.

Footnote 340:

Matt. xx. 28; Mark x. 45.

Footnote 341:

Matt. xxvi. 28.

Footnote 342:

Rev. v. 9, 10.

Footnote 343:

John i. 29. For an example of the use of the word “_world_” to denote
the Gentiles, see Rom. xi. 12-15; where St. Paul, speaking of the
rejection of the Messiah by the Jews, declares that it is only
temporary; and as it has given occasion for the adoption of the
Gentiles, so will this lead, by ultimate reaction, to the re-admission
of Israel; a consummation in which the Gentiles should rejoice without
boasting or highmindedness. “If,” he says, “the fall of them (the
Israelites) be the riches of _the world_ (the Gentiles), and the
diminishing of them, the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their
fulness! For I speak to you, Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of
the Gentiles, I magnify my office; if, by any means, I may provoke to
emulation them which are my flesh (the Jews,) and save some of them;
for if the casting away of them be the _reconciling of the world_,
what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?”

Footnote 344:

Acts xx. 28. It is hardly necessary to say, that the reading of our
common version “_church of God_” wants the support of the best
authorities; and that with the general consent of the most competent
critics, Griesbach reads “_church of the Lord_.” See Note C.

Footnote 345:

1 Pet. i. 18, 19.

Footnote 346:

1 Pet. ii. 23-25.

Footnote 347:

1 Pet. iii. 17; iv. 3.

Footnote 348:

2 Cor. v. 21.

Footnote 349:

1 Cor. v. 7.

Footnote 350:

Rom. iii. 22-26.

Footnote 351:

1 John iv. 2.

Footnote 352:

1 John i. 7.

Footnote 353:

1 John i. 8.

Footnote 354:

1 John ii. 1, 2.

Footnote 355:

1 John iv. 9, 10.

Footnote 356:

1 John v. 21.

Footnote 357:

1 John iii. 16.

Footnote 358:

Rom. ii. 25.

Footnote 359:

2 Thess. i. 7-10.

Footnote 360:

Gal. iii. 13: even here the apostle cannot refrain from adverting to
his _Gentile_ interpretation of the cross; for he adds,—“that the
blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ.”

Footnote 361:

Rom. ix. 22, 23.

Footnote 362:

2 Pet. ii. 5.

Footnote 363:

2 Pet. iii. 9.

Footnote 364:

1 Pet. iii. 20-22.

Footnote 365:

1 Cor. vii. 29.

Footnote 366:

Eph. v. 16; Col. iv. 5.

Footnote 367:

1 John ii. 18.

Footnote 368:

Phil. iv. 5; James v. 8; 1 Pet. iv. 7.

Footnote 369:

Heb. ii. 17.

Footnote 370:

Num. xix. 11-20; Lev. xx. 25, 26; Num. vi. 9-12.

Footnote 371:

Lev. v. 14-19.

Footnote 372:

Lev. xii. 1-8.

Footnote 373:

Lev. xiv.

Footnote 374:

Lev. xvi.; xxiii. 26-32; Ex. xxx. 10; Num. xxix. 7-11.

Footnote 375:

In three or four instances, it is true, a sin-offering is demanded
from the perpetrator of some act of _moral wrong_. But in all these
cases a suitable punishment was ordained also; a circumstance
inconsistent with the idea, that the expiation procurred remission of
guilt. The _sacrifice_ appended to the _penal infliction_, indicates
the two-fold character of the act;—at once a _ceremonial defilement_
and a _crime_; and requiring, to remedy the one, an atoning rite,—to
chastise the other, a judicial penalty. See an excellent tract by Rev.
Edward Higginson, of Hull, entitled, “The Sacrifice of Christ
scripturally and rationally interpreted:” particularly pp. 30-34.

Footnote 376:

Heb. viii. 2. 5.

Footnote 377:

ix. 1, 23, 24.

Footnote 378:

vii. 16; viii. 1.

Footnote 379:

viii. 3.

Footnote 380:

Heb. ix. 15.

Footnote 381:

viii. 5.

Footnote 382:

x. 3.

Footnote 383:

ix. 7, 25.

Footnote 384:

Heb. x. 4.

Footnote 385:

vii. 25.

Footnote 386:

ix. 25-27, 12; x. 12, 14.

Footnote 387:

ix. 8.

Footnote 388:

vii. 17, 24-28.

Footnote 389:

vii. 27. Let the reader look carefully again into the verbal and
logical structure of this verse; and then ask himself, whether it is
not as plain as words can make it, that Christ “once for all” _offered
up_ “_a sacrifice first for_ HIS OWN SINS, and _then for the
peoples_.” The argument surely is this; “he need not do the _daily_
thing, for he has done it _once for all_; the never-finished work of
other pontiffs, a single act of his achieved.” The sentiment loses its
meaning, unless that which he did once is _the self-same thing_ which
they did always; and what was that?—the offering by the High-priest of
a sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people’s. With
what propriety, then, can Mr. Buddicom ask us this question: “Why is
he said to have excelled the Jewish High-priest in _not_ offering a
sacrifice for himself?” I submit, that no such thing is said: but
that, on the contrary, it is positively affirmed that Christ _did_
offer sacrifice for his own sins. So plain indeed is this, that
Trinitarian commentators are forced to slip in a restraining word and
an additional sentiment, into the last clause of the verse. Thus
Peirce; “Who has no need, like the priests under the law, from time to
time to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and after that for
the people’s. For this _latter_ he did once for all when he offered up
himself; _and as to the former, he had no occasion to do it at all_.”
And no doubt the writer of the epistle _ought_ to have said just this,
if he intended to draw the kind of contrast, which orthodox theology
requires, between Jesus and the Hebrew priests. He limits the
opposition between them to _one_ particular;—the Son of Aaron made
offering _daily_,—the Son of God _once for all_. Divines must add
_another_ particular; that the Jewish priest atoned for _two_ classes
of sins, his own and the people’s,—Christ for the people’s only.
Suppose for a moment that this was the author’s design; that the word
“_this_,” instead of having its proper grammatical antecedent, may be
restrained, as in the commentary cited above, to the sacrifice for
_the people’s_ sins; then the word “daily” may be left out, without
disturbance to the other substantive particular of the contrast: the
verse will then stand thus; “who needeth not, as those High-priests,
to offer up sacrifice for his own sins; _for_ he offered up sacrifice
for the people’s sins, when he offered up himself.” Here, all the
reasoning is obviously gone, and the sentence becomes a mere inanity:
to make sense, we want, instead of the latter clause, the sentiment of
Peirce,—_for_ “he had no occasion to do this at all.” This, however,
is an invention of the expositor, more jealous for his author’s
orthodoxy, than for his composition. I think it necessary to add that,
by leaving out the most emphatic word in this verse (the word _once_)
Mr. Buddicom has suppressed the author’s antithesis, and favoured the
suggestion of his own. I have no doubt that this was unconsciously
done; but it shows how system rubs off the angles of Scriptural
difficulties.—I subjoin a part of the note of John Crell on the
passage: “de pontifice Christo loquitur. Quid vero fecit semel
Christus? quid aliud, quam quod Pontifex antiquus stata die
quotannis[a] faciebat? Principaliter autem hic non de oblatione pro
peccatis populi; sed de oblatione pro ipsius Pontificis peccatis agi,
ex superioribus, ipsoque rationum contextu manifestum est.”

The sins which his sacrifice cancelled must have been of the same
order in the people, and in himself; certainly therefore not moral in
their character, but ceremonial. His death was, for himself no less
than for his Hebrew disciples, commutation for the Mosaic ordinances.
Had he not died, he must have continued under their power; “were he on
earth, he would not be a priest,” or have “obtained that more
excellent ministry,” by which he clears away, in the courts above, all
possibilities of ritual sin below, and himself emerges from legal to
spiritual relations.

Footnote a:

_This is_ obviously the meaning of καθ’ ἡμέραν in this passage; _from
time to time, and in the case_ alluded to, _yearly_; not, as in the
common version, _daily_.

Footnote 390:

Heb. ix. 13, 14.

Footnote 391:

x. 16, 19, 20, 24.

Footnote 392:

Mr. Buddicom’s Lecture on the Atonement, p. 471.

Footnote 393:

See Mr. M‘Neile’s Lecture, pp. 302, 311, 328, 340, 341.

Footnote 394:

Mr. M‘Neile’s Lecture, p. 338.

Footnote 395:

Phil. iii. 15.

Footnote 396:

Eph. iv. 13.

Footnote 397:

John i. 12.

Footnote 398:

Rev. D. James, in his Lecture entitled “The doctrine of the Trinity,
proved as a consequence from the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ,” pp.
366-375.

Footnote 399:

Tillotson’s Works, London, 1717, vol. i. p. 405.

Footnote 400:

Tillotson’s Works, London, 1717, vol. i. p. 579.

Footnote 401:

Socinus thus states the opinion which he attempts to confute:
“Receptior hodie sententia est, homini naturaliter ejusque animo
insitam esse divinitatis alicujus opinionem, cujus vi cuncta regantur
ac gubernentur, quæque humanarum rerum imprimis curam gerat, hominibus
consulat atque prospiciat. Hæc sententia, quam nos falsam esse
arbitramur,” &c.—_Prælectiones Theol. Fausti Socini Senensis_, c. ii.

Footnote 402:

Mr. James’s illustration of the nature of a _spirit_.

Footnote 403:

Introduction to the Analogy.

Footnote 404:

Lecture, p. 371.

Footnote 405:

Modern Infidelity considered, p. 18.

Footnote 406:

Lecture, p. 451.

Footnote 407:

Remarks on the commonly-received Doctrine of Atonement and Sacrifice,
by Rev. W. Turner, jun., A.M. Note A. second edition.

Footnote 408:

Lecture, p. 414.

Footnote 409:

Ibid. p. 410.

Footnote 410:

Ibid. pp. 412, 413.

Footnote 411:

Ibid. p. 411.

Footnote 412:

Lecture, p. 492.

Footnote 413:

Ibid. p. 507.

Footnote 414:

Ibid. pp. 511, 512.

Footnote 415:

Ars Critica, P. I. sect. i. cap. ix. § 11.

Footnote 416:

Magee on the Atonement, vol. iii. p. 335. Note. 5th Edition. This note
is a broad caricature of the discussion in the Monthly Repository: and
shows that the Author might have been the Cruikshanks of theology, had
his _humour_ always been _good-humour_.

Footnote 417:

Magee on the Atonement, vol. iii. pp. 343, 344. Note.

Footnote 418:

Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, vol. x. p. 481.
1815. I quote from this work, rather than from Mr. Aspland’s “Plea for
Unitarian Dissenters,” in obedience to the Archbishop’s own reference.

Footnote 419:

Preface to Mr. Byrth’s Lecture, part i. p. vii.

Footnote 420:

Newcome and Whitby _in loc._

Footnote 421:

Magee on the Atonement, vol. iii. p. 222.

Footnote 422:

In the 2nd Edition it is p. 78. All my citations are made from this
edition of Mr. B’s work, published in 1816; and from the 5th Edition
of Archbishop Magee’s, published in 1832.

Footnote 423:

Magee on the Atonement, vol. iii. pp. 223, 224.

Footnote 424:

There is a possibility, which I think it right to suggest, of a
difference between the two Editions of Mr. B’s work; as, however, the
accusation is still found in the newest Edition of the Archbishop’s
book, I conclude that this is not the case. Indeed, even if the
Prelate’s quotation had been _verbally_ true, it would _in spirit_
have been no less false: for, at all events, Mr. B. cites the Vulgate,
to give evidence as to the _text_, not the _translation_; and had he
used the word _renders_, it would only have been because the term
naturally occurs when a VERSION is adduced to determine a READING.

Footnote 425:

Page 38.

Footnote 426:

Magee on the Atonement, vol. i. p. 170.

Footnote 427:

Vol. iii. p. 57.

Footnote 428:

Vol. ii. p. 387.

Footnote 429:

Vol. iii. p. 248.

Footnote 430:

p. 203.

Footnote 431:

p. 210.

Footnote 432:

p. 296.

Footnote 433:

p. 249.

Footnote 434:

p. 274.

Footnote 435:

p. 239.

Footnote 436:

p. 82.

Footnote 437:

p. 91.

Footnote 438:

p. 132.

Footnote 439:

p. 64.

Footnote 440:

p. 242.

Footnote 441:

p. 275.

Footnote 442:

p. 66.

Footnote 443:

p. 145.

Footnote 444:

pp. 275, 276.

Footnote 445:

Magee on the Atonement, Preface, p. vi.

Footnote 446:

Vol. iii. p. 108.

Footnote 447:

Vol. i. xii.

Footnote 448:

iii. 204.

Footnote 449:

p. 47.

Footnote 450:

p. 100.

Footnote 451:

p. 67.

Footnote 452:

pp. 57, 58.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PREFACE.

The Rev. D. James commences the Preface to his Lecture with these words:
“Modern Unitarianism is a compound of Infidelity and Heresy.” It would
be very easy for me to say what modern _Trinitarianism_ is, and to
attach to it two epithets which Mr. James would relish no more than I do
Infidelity and Heresy. It is evident, however, that this calling of
names proves nothing but the unfitness of the mind which so indulges its
_temper_ and _feeling_ to be engaged in _intellectual_ and
_argumentative_ controversy. Does Mr. James expect to _convince_ or
_persuade_ any Unitarians, by calling them Infidels and Heretics? The
Christ Church method of Conversion is very well for Infallibles, who
have only to denounce, and for “ordained Clergymen,” who, with a
simplicity of extravagance approaching the sublime, shrink from no
consequences of their first principles, and boldly assert that the Holy
Spirit is _their_ Interpreter of Scripture,—but it displays a strange
ignorance or contempt of the only avenues by which the minds of their
fellow Christians can be approached, and of the moral and argumentative
means by which alone conviction can be produced.

In what sense does Mr. James use the word ‘Heresy,’ in the sentence
quoted? If in the sense of _error_, then is he of the infallible Church
that he decides _authoritatively_ on such points? If in the sense of
_schism_ and _division_, who does not know that the Creed-making Church
is the Mother of the Sects, the fomentor of our religious strifes? With
what grace or justice does that man call another an infidel, who is
himself an infidel in respect to the primal and universal Revelation,
and applies himself to blot out the divine signatures from the soul of
man, and the material works of God? There is no infidelity so bad as
this. The Apostle speaks of the law written on the heart, and of the
Gentiles who had not the Jewish Law, being yet a Law unto themselves,
and the Psalmist speaks of the moral fidelity and constancy of God being
shadowed forth by the unfailingness of His material Laws,—but Mr. James,
who makes strange work with scripture, maintains in opposition to both
Scripture and Philosophy, “the moral character and unity of God not
discoverable from the works of Creation.” I have been long prepared for
this. Those who must maintain Trinitarianism have no other resource than
to blot out the lights of the ORIGINAL REVELATION.[453] NATURE and the
SOUL must be discredited if the Trinitarian Theology is to hold its
place. This has been long evident to all who have watched the progress
of knowledge, and the signs of the times. The works of God, and the
oracles of the Soul, must be insulted, that the CHURCH, the CREED, and
the PRIEST may remain.

I have referred but slightly to Mr. James’s Lecture in the following
pages, because I wished to build up an independent argument of great
importance, and would not be led out of my way to answer reasonings and
statements which, being answered, would leave the real controversy
unaffected, and without a step of advancement. Nor could it be of much
moment to discuss the CRITICISM that finds the Trinity in a Hebrew
plural—the REASONING that, (in violation of one of the maxims of
Philosophy, to attribute _no more_ Causes than are adequate to the
effects,) in the Works of an _Omnipotent_ Creator finds in unity of
Design no proof of Unity of Being—the SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENTATION that lays
down the Mosaic Law of Vengeance, “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth,” _expressly condemned by Christ_, as unworthy even of _men_, as
the morality of God himself, “the principle of eternal right, and the
law of his own government”[454]—the transcendental METAPHYSICS that sees
no difficulty in the infinite and omnipresent Deity becoming incarnate
in a human frame, on the ground that “spirits occupy no space, and that
thousands of them might be within a thimble, and the thimble on the
finger of the seamstress, and her finger touch none of them.”[455]

There are, however, some statements in the Preface to Mr. James’s
Lecture, professing to be testimonies from Antiquity to the Trinitarian
Doctrine, which demand some notice. To establish his inaccuracy I shall
simply oppose to his statements the statements of Professor Burton.

1. “[The word Trinity] is found in the writings of Justin Martyr, who
was converted to the Christian faith about the year of our Lord 140.”—p.
v. Mr. James mentions in a note that some divines dispute the
authenticity of the work in which the word is found: but Mr. James is
not one of those divines, for he proceeds to assert, that the passage in
Justin Martyr “brings the use of the word within half a century of the
apostolic age.”

Now let us hear Dr. Burton.—“‘_Theophili ad Autolycum_, lib. ii. c. 15.’
I quote this passage, not on account of the sentiment which it contains,
(for the allusion is sufficiently puerile,) but because it is the
earliest passage (A. D. 180) in the works of any of the fathers, where
we find the Greek word Τριας, _Trinity_: and we can thus prove that the
term was applied to the three persons of the Trinity as early as toward
the end of the second century.

“Theophilus had been giving an account of the creation, as described by
Moses in the book of Genesis; and following that allegorical method of
interpretation, which the fathers borrowed too freely from the schools
of Alexandria, he extracts a hidden meaning from the fact of the
heavenly bodies being created on the fourth day. ‘In like manner also
the three days, which preceded the luminaries, are types of the Trinity,
of God, and his Word, and his Wisdom.’” Burton adds in a note—“This
passage is overlooked by Suicer in his Thesaurus, v. Τριὰς, who very
properly observes, that the _Expositio rectæ confessionis_, in which the
word occurs, and which has been ascribed to Justin Martyr, _is later
than that writer by some centuries_.”—_Theol. Works_, vol. ii. 2nd part,
p. 34.

2. “The next who makes use of the word in his writings is Theophilus, a
Gentile convert.”—p. vi. Let us hear what Burton says of this
Theophilus, and of his use of the word Trinity, _the first_ who used it
in such connection.

“Some doubts have been raised concerning the identity and date of
Theophilus: but it seems to be generally agreed, that the person whose
works have come down to us was the sixth bishop of Antioch, and was
appointed to that see about the year 168. He tells us himself that he
had been bred up in heathenism, and it is plain _that his language and
thoughts retained a lasting impression from the Platonic
philosophy_.”—p. 33.

“We perhaps ought not to infer from the words of Theophilus that the
term Τριας had come in his day to bear the signification of a trinity in
unity. He may have used it merely to express _three things_; and the
_three days_, which he compares with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
might have been spoken of by him as τριὰς τῶν ἡμερῶν, _a triad_, or
_trinity of days_. In this sense Clement of Alexandria speaks of ‘the
holy triad, or trinity, faith, hope, and charity;’ and Origen uses the
terms τριὰς and τετρὰς for periods of three and four years respectively.
Tertullian also, at the end of the second century, used the term
_trinitas_ in the same ordinary sense, for any three things.

“I would not therefore argue from the mere occurrence of the word in the
writings of Theophilus, that τριας contained a signification of _unity_,
as well as of _trinity_: but this much is at least evident, that
Theophilus must have considered some resemblance, if not equality, to
have existed between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or he would not
have included them in the same type”—p. 38.

3. “Polycarp, a disciple of St. John, when at the stake, addressed a
prayer to God, which he concluded in this manner:—‘_For all things I
praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify thee, together with the eternal and
heavenly Jesus Christ: with whom, unto thee, and the Holy Spirit, be
glory, both now and for ever, world without end. Amen._’”—p. vii.

Professor Burton:—“Such are the concluding words of the prayer in the
edition of Archbishop Usher: but Eusebius has quoted them differently,
‘I glorify thee, through the eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, thy
beloved Son, through whom be glory to thee, with him in the Holy Ghost,
both now and for evermore. Amen.’”

“The early orthodox writers,” as Bishop Bull goes on to remark, “while
they glorified the Father _through the Son_, intended to express the
subordination of the Son, in his relation of Son, and the pre-eminence
of the Father, in his relation of Father: but by adoring the Son
_together with the Father_, they intended to express his being of one
substance, and his existing in the same divine essence and nature with
the Father.”—“Theodoret informs us, that in the middle of the fourth
century the clergy and people of Antioch were divided, some using the
conjunction _and_, when they glorified the Son, (_i. e._, saying _and to
the Son_,) and others applying the preposition _through_ to the Son, and
_in_ to the Holy Ghost. This was the period when the dispute concerning
the form of doxology became general: and Philistorgius, the Arian
historian, is speaking of the same time and place, when he says,
‘Flavianus was the first person who used the words _Glory to the Father
and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost_, for before his time some had
said, _Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost_, which was
the expression in most general use: and others _Glory to the Father in
the Son and Holy Ghost_.’”—pp. 7, 8, 9.

“It is true that Eusebius appears to have found a different reading in
his copy of Polycarp’s prayer: _and a critical question like this can
never be demonstrably settled_.”—p. 13.

4. “[Justin Martyr] says—‘HIM (the Father) and that SON who hath
proceeded from him, and the PROPHETICAL SPIRIT, _we worship and
adore_.’”—p. vii.

Where did Mr. James find this quotation? I shall supply some words which
he has omitted, coming in between two clauses, which he has printed as
_continuous_ parts of the sentence. The omitted words supply a good test
for _a fundamental principle_ of Trinitarian interpretation, that of
_equalizing_ all persons joined together by the conjunctive conjunction.
I shall give the _omitted words_ in italics.

“Justin is answering the charge of atheism, which was brought against
the Christians, and observes, that they were punished for not
worshipping evil demons, which were not really gods. ‘Hence it is that
we are called atheists: and we confess that we are atheists with respect
to such reputed Gods as these: but not with respect to the true God, the
Father of justice, temperance, and every other virtue, with whom is no
mixture of evil. But Him, and the Son who came from him, and gave us
this instruction, _and the host of the other good angels which attend
upon and resemble them_, and the prophetic spirit, we worship and adore,
paying them a reasonable and true honour, and not refusing to deliver to
any one else, who wishes to be taught, what we ourselves have learnt.’”

After such careless quotations, to say the best of them, I am not
surprised to find Mr. James, with singular self-devotion, placing
himself beside Mr. Byrth, to share the condemnation that falls upon
injurious representations, not only unproved, but disproved. Mr. James
speaks of the _Unitarian crime_ of distorted representations, as proved
by Mr. Byrth. Mr. James may make common cause with Mr. Byrth, if he is
unwise enough to do so; but I can assure him that his own burden is
heavy enough to bear, without encumbering himself with any portion of
another’s.

To the greatest part of his quotations Mr. James has given no reference,
so that it is impossible to verify them. If he is correct, he has been
more fortunate in some cases than Professor Burton. I should be glad to
have the means of testing his extracts from Origen. He ought to have
stated, that both Bishop Bull and Dr. Priestley, when speaking of the
Ante-Nicene Fathers, never confounded the Trinity of these Fathers with
the Post-Nicene Trinity, or with modern Orthodoxy.

Nothing can be more unphilosophical than the manner in which testimonies
to modern opinions have been found in the Fathers. Any words that will
_bear_ the sense have been pushed forward as authorities. No distinction
has been made between the ideas _suggested_ by the words to _modern
readers_, and the ideas of the writers originally suggesting the words.
The _suggested_ and the _suggesting_ ideas would be found strangely
different. Whoever wishes to have clear ideas on this question, the
opinions of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, and the origin of the Trinity,
should read the portions of Cudworth’s Intellectual System that bear
upon the subject.

---------------------

LECTURE VII.

THE UNSCRIPTURAL ORIGIN AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.

“THE FATHER THAT DWELLETH IN ME, HE DOETH THE WORKS.”—_John_ xiv. 10.

It is a profound observation of Professor Dugald Stewart, that you never
destroy an error until you have traced it to its sources, until you have
accounted for its origin. A popular doctrine, full of life in the strong
faith of those who hold it, cannot be encountered at the height of its
power, and struck down at once by an argument; the world is apt to take
for granted that whatever is widely believed must have some roots in
truth, and you must go up the stream of opinion, if you would gradually
remove this idea so supporting to error, of its strength and fulness,
stripping away the impressions of magnitude as you ascend, until at last
you have left all the strength behind you, and have come to where you
can contemplate, undeceived, the weak and miserable beginnings of the
turbid flood. Were some Grecian idolater to have followed the gliding
steps of his river God, until his majestic movements were shortened into
the tricklings of the mountain spring, if the deity did not entirely
disappear, it would at least have changed its form, and melted into the
minor nymph of the Fountain.

Whenever we encounter the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is received at
the present day, and attempt to arrest it by the strength of Reason and
the strength of Scripture, the flood is too strong for us, the faith of
the world flows upon the current, and we are swept aside as things that
had vainly interposed to intercept the rushings of some mighty tide. We
must travel up to the first droppings if we would demonstrate the
derived nature of this now full stream of faith. If the ascent
terminates before it reaches Christ and the Apostles, then its origin is
not Scriptural but Ecclesiastical; its fountain is not in the depths of
the nature of God, but in the airy speculations of the vain philosophy
of man.

My subject is entitled “The unscriptural Origin and Ecclesiastical
History of the Doctrine of the Trinity.” I shall invert the order of
these topics. I shall show first _where it has its origin_, that we may
be saved the unnecessary toil of straining and distorting our vision, in
searching for it where it is not to be found. If I can exhibit its birth
in Ecclesiastical history, this will so far be a proof that it had no
previous birth in Evangelical History. If I can cut it off from the
living fountain of Revelation, and show it proceeding from other
springs, this will so far be a proof that it is human and not divine.
The positive assertion contained in my title, if established, will
establish also the negative portion of it:—for the Ecclesiastical rise
and progress of the Trinity are the negation of its Scriptural origin.

Christianity was originally delivered to Jews; and the question
naturally arises, how could their pure theism ever assume the
Trinitarian modification of Unity; how, to use the early language of
this Controversy, could the MONARCHY ever be diluted into the ECONOMY,
if it had not been constrained to adopt this form by the overpowering
distinctness of a Revelation? Now we are able to prove that the Jewish
Christians never did accept the doctrine of the deity of Christ; that on
this account they are classed with Heretics by the Greek and Latin
Fathers, under the names of Nazarenes and Ebionites; and that not until
after the Gospel passed out of the keeping of the Apostles, and, cut off
from its Jewish spring, was cast into the midst of the Gentile world, to
modify and to be modified, did it come into contact with Heathen
Philosophy, and slowly take the impress of its spirit.

There were two very marked divisions of the Jewish people, under widely
different influences of Religion and Philosophy, and not acquainted,
perhaps, with the same language,—the Jews of Palestine, and the Jews of
Egypt. The Jews of Palestine, sheltered from commerce with the world,
more by their unsocial Faith, than by the deep and quiet vallies of
their sequestered land, partook little of the spirit of the Times, and
imparted to it nothing; and though after the Babylonish Captivity,
Gentile Philosophy had tinctured and in some sense expanded their
religious views, yet when they returned again to their homes that
influence was cut off, the living connection was no longer maintained,
and its effects were rather traditionary mixtures, than seeds of
progress.

In contrast with the insulated life of the Jews of Palestine, the Jews
of Alexandria lived in the very centre of the world’s freshest
ideas—their dwelling was the mart of nations—and Grecian and Oriental
Philosophy met together in their far-famed Schools, and mingled their
Wisdom. “The arms of the Macedonians,” says Gibbon, “diffused over Asia
and Egypt the language and learning of Greece; and the theological
system of Plato (before Christ, 360) was taught, with less reserve, and
perhaps with some improvements, in the celebrated School of Alexandria.
A numerous colony of Jews had been invited, by the favour of the
Ptolemies, to settle in their new capital. While the bulk of the nation
practised their legal ceremonies, and pursued the lucrative operations
of Commerce, a few Hebrews, of a more liberal spirit, devoted their
lives to religious and philosophical contemplation. They cultivated with
diligence, and embraced with ardour, the theological system of the
Athenian Sage. But their national pride would have been mortified by a
fair confession of their former poverty: and they boldly marked, as the
sacred inheritance of their ancestors, the gold and jewels which they
had so lately stolen from their Egyptian masters. One hundred years
before the birth of Christ, a philosophical treatise, which manifestly
betrays the style and sentiments of the School of Plato, was produced by
the Alexandrian Jews, and unanimously received as a genuine and valuable
relic of the inspired Wisdom of Solomon. A similar union of the Mosaic
faith and the Grecian philosophy, distinguishes the works of Philo,
which were composed for the most part under the reign of Augustus. The
material soul of the Universe might offend the piety of the Hebrews: but
they applied the character of the LOGOS to the Jehovah of Moses and the
patriarchs; and the Son of God was introduced upon earth under a
visible, and even human appearance, to perform those familiar offices
which seem incompatible with the nature and attributes of the Universal
cause.”[456]

It is not necessary that I should inquire here with great accuracy into
the nature of the Trinity as taught by Plato. I think it is most
probable that Plato’s Trinity was a Trinity of Attributes rather than a
Trinity of Persons; that it corresponded rather with Sabellianism than
with the Orthodox form of the Doctrine. This is a question, however, on
which it is impossible to speak with certainty, owing, partly, to the
nature of the ideas which constitute this compound conception of Deity,
and partly to the gorgeous style of the imaginative metaphysician, whose
figures we hardly know whether we are to harden into Realities, or to
fuse into Ideas. Authorities are divided upon this point—and we have the
name of Cudworth upon the one side, and the scarcely less illustrious
one of Guizot upon the other. Whatever may have been the view of Plato
himself,[457] it is certain that before Christ, his followers, some of
the purer of the later Platonists, as they are called, taught a doctrine
of the Trinity exactly corresponding to the form in which it was
established nearly three hundred years after the death of our Saviour,
by the first General Council of the Christian Church. The Platonists
contemplated one original fountain of being, a simple unity, “which
virtually containeth all things,” from whence all other things, whether
temporal or eternal, whether created or uncreated, were altogether
derived. This Monad or Unity the Platonists considered as the only
absolute or perfect existence, superior to intellect or wisdom, (Logos)
for these two reasons—first, because Intellect being concerned with
ideas, implies numbers and multiplicity; whereas the Supreme is UNITY;
and secondly, that because “Knowledge is not the highest good, there
must be some substantial thing in order of Nature superior to
Intellect.” In the same way that GOODNESS and UNITY, the properties of
the self-existent God, were supposed to be superior to Mind or Wisdom,
the second principle, so in its turn Intellect was supposed to be
superior to the moving spirit or energy which carried ideas (the ideas
of the Logos) into Action. The Monad, or Supreme Unity, generated
Intellect, and Intellect as containing the intelligible ideas or
archetypes of all sensible things, generated Soul or the spirit of
Action. Hence the Platonic Trinity: THE ONE GOOD; Intellect (LOGOS OR
NOUS); PSYCHE, or operating energy.[458] In Platonic language, the FIRST
in this Trinity is said to be _All things Unitively_; the SECOND, _All
things intellectually_; and the THIRD, _All things actively or
productively_. I shall give one example of the style of the Platonists
in expressing these Trinitarian conceptions. It is exactly that which
the earlier Fathers would have used when speaking of the Christian
Trinity. “That which is always perfect generates what is Eternal, and
that which it generates is always less than itself. What shall we say
therefore of the most absolutely perfect Being of all? Does that produce
nothing from itself? Or rather, does it not produce the greatest of all
things after it? Now the greatest of all things after the most
absolutely perfect Being is Mind or Intellect; and this is Second to it.
For Mind beholdeth this as its Father, and standeth in need of nothing
else besides it; whereas that First Principle standeth in need of no
(Logos) Mind or Intellect. What is generated from that which is better
than Mind, must needs be Mind or Intellect, because Mind is better than
all other things, they being all in order of nature after it, and junior
to it; as PSYCHE itself, or the First Soul; for this is also the Word or
Energy of Mind (Logos), as that is the Word or Energy of the First
Good.[459] Perfect Intellect,” (Logos, the second in the Trinity,)
“generates Soul” (Psyche, or Moving Spirit, the third in the Platonic
Trinity), “and it being perfect must needs generate, for so great a
Power could not remain steril. But that which is here begotten also,
cannot be greater than its Begetter; but must needs be Inferior to it,
as being the Image thereof.”—(_Plotinus. Cudworth_, p. 580.)

Now to connect such speculations as these with Gentile Christianity we
have the intermediate link of the Platonizing or Alexandrian Jews. About
two hundred years before Christ the Hebrew Scriptures were made
accessible to Grecian curiosity through the medium of the Septuagint
Translation: and when comparison came to be instituted between the
wisdom of their Sacred Books, and the wisdom of the Schools, a strong
temptation came into force upon the Jewish Platonists, by a system of
allegory and fanciful interpretation to make their Scriptures divulge
recondite doctrines, and by such imaginative means to metamorphose its
simplest statements into the likeness of the deep and mysterious
teachings of Philosophy. Hence arose the whole system of allegorizing
which prevailed so extensively among the Jews of Alexandria. They were
under two sets of influences, an affection for the Platonic or Eclectic
Philosophy of their Schools, and a jealousy for their Religion that made
them shrink from the idea that any Philosophy should contain secrets not
there divulged.[460] They combined these two affections, and made their
Scriptures speak the language of the Schools by means of the
transforming process of allegorical interpretation. Examples without end
might be given of the most extravagant transfigurations of the events of
Hebrew History.

As a preparation for the manner of speaking on these subjects afterwards
adopted by the earlier Christian Trinitarians, I will extract one
passage, which perhaps most faithfully represents the purer views of
Philo of Alexandria, the most eminent of the Jewish Platonizers, and
whose influence operating upon Christianity through the minds of the
Gentile philosophical believers, is to this day felt upon the popular
forms of our faith. I have only to premise that he is speaking of the
Attributes of God abstractly from God himself; and though it is more
than probable that Philo as well as Plato never separated these
Attributes from the Supreme Deity, still it was the necessary tendency
of such personifications to harden into distinct persons, and with
common minds personified Attributes very soon came to be considered as
Real Beings. This then was the original source of the Christian Trinity.
To keep the lofty and retired Essence of God apart from all contact with
matter which was looked upon as evil, and from number which was looked
upon as imperfect, the Powers of God were first considered as Emanations
from Him by successive generation—INTELLECT proceeding from the ONE
GOOD, and operating ENERGY or SPIRIT proceeding from Intellect (Logos)
to consummate its Ideas, and then gradually came to be separated from
Him, by a very natural process of philosophic deteriorations, and to be
fixed down into independent personalities. With these explanations I now
quote from Philo. He belonged to the age of Christ, but was born some
time anterior to the Christian era: Brucker says twenty years. Philo is
allegorizing the appearance of the three angels to Abraham, into a
threefold manifestation of the One God: “The FATHER is in the middle of
all, who in Holy Scripture is by a peculiar name styled THE BEING [HE
WHO IS]: and on each side are [two] most ancient Powers next to THE
BEING, whereof one is called the Effective (creative Power) and the
other Royal; and the Effective, GOD, for by this [the Father] made and
adorned the Universe; and the Royal, LORD, for it is fit he should rule
and govern what he has made. Being therefore attended on both sides with
his Powers, to a discerning understanding he appears one while to be
ONE, and another while to be THREE. ONE when the mind being in the
highest degree purified, and passing over not only a multitude of
numbers, but also that which is next to an Unit,” (the Monad) “the
number of two,” (the other two, Logos and Psyche) “endeavours after a
simple and uncompounded Idea, perfect of itself: and THREE, when not as
yet sufficiently exercised in great mysteries, it busies itself about
lesser, and is not able to conceive THE BEING, [HE WHO IS,] without any
other, of itself, but by his Works, and either as creating or
governing.”[461]

Such, then, were the prevalent modes of Conception at the time when the
Gospel passed out of the hands of strictly Jewish interpreters, and came
to be inspected by the eyes of Gentile Philosophers. With more or less
purity of conception, all the Platonists personified the divine
Attributes; and some of them represented these personified Attributes as
distinct Existences, not hesitating to speak of a second God, though
holding him to be derived and dependent. There is no trace among the
purer Platonists of any belief of three co-equal Gods, each possessing
within himself the fullness of Deity, yet mysteriously united. The
second and third persons in the Platonic Trinity were carefully
represented as derived, dependent, and subordinate, under the
similitudes of the stream and the fountain, the branch and the vine, the
sun and its outshining effulgence; the relation between them being like
that of three apparent Suns,—“two of them being but the _parhelii_ of
the other, and essentially dependent on it: for as much as the second
would be but the reflected Image of the first, and the third but the
second refracted.”[462]

Now it so happened that the Apostle John, living at Ephesus, “the centre
of the mingling opinions of the East and West,” made use of this term
“Logos” as already familiar to those for whom he wrote, and with the
purpose of impressing upon the word the higher and purer meaning
attached to it by the Jews of Palestine; wresting it from the
philosophical to the strictly Jewish or Christian sense. Nothing could
be more natural than that the Apostle should adopt the style of the
philosophic schools in the midst of which he wrote, especially since it
was not peculiar to them, but already in use among the Jews; and that
endeavouring to connect truth with familiar modes of speaking, he should
attempt to infuse into the word the more spiritual ideas with which it
was already associated in his own language.

“St. John,” says Guizot, “was a Jew, born and educated in Palestine; he
would naturally, then, attach to the word _Logos_ the sense attached to
it by the Jews of Palestine. Closely examined, the ideas which he gives
of the _Logos_ cannot agree with those of Philo and the school of
Alexandria; they correspond, on the contrary, with those of the Jews of
Palestine. Perhaps St. John, employing a well known term to explain a
doctrine which was yet unknown, has slightly altered the sense: it is
this alteration which we appear to discover on comparing different
passages of his writings. It is worthy of remark, that the Jews of
Palestine, who did not perceive this alteration, could find nothing
extraordinary in what St. John said of the Logos; at least they
comprehended it without difficulty; while the Greeks and Grecising Jews,
on their parts, brought to it prejudices and preconceptions easily
reconciled with those of the Evangelist, who did not expressly
contradict them. This circumstance must have much favoured the progress
of Christianity. Thus the fathers of the Church, in the two first
centuries and later, formed almost all in the school of Alexandria, gave
to the Logos of St. John a sense nearly similar to that which it
received from Philo.[463] Their doctrine approached very near to that
which, in the fourth century, the Council of Nice condemned in the
person of Arius.”[464]

It would not be possible, within my present limits, to trace, with a
minute accuracy, how the Logos of the schools became connected with the
Logos of the Gospel; and afterwards, under the necessity of adjusting
these conceptions with the nominal Unity of God, changed its form into
the present theory of the Trinity. It will readily be imagined that the
Gentile Christians, accustomed to associate ideas of external power with
their Deities, and at the same time to contemplate them in connection
with humanity, would shrink from the bare and unclothed conception of
the crucified Jesus; would endeavour to throw around their new faith a
mystic splendour that might protect it from the ridicule of Heathen
scoffers, and naturally seize upon means so obvious, the language
offered by St. John, and the ideas offered by their own philosophy, to
connect the pre-existent soul of Jesus not with Humanity, but with God.
In this way they could remove the shame and odium of the cross, that
stumbling block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness. We little
realize with what distaste and abhorrence a Hebrew looking for the
Messiah, and a Philosopher speculating on the nature of the divine
Emanations that were the Mediators between God and men, would
contemplate the despised Galilean executed as a malefactor. Neither do
we realize, as we ought to do in this connection, the magnanimity of
Paul: “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ
and him crucified;” so much has the technical jargon of theology
overcast the moral sublimity of the Apostle’s spiritual meaning.

I shall now, with as much distinctness as a subject purely literary will
admit, attempt to exhibit to you the gradual transformations, by which
these Conceptions slowly assumed the present orthodox form of the
doctrine of the Trinity. If this had been a doctrine of Revelation, it
would, of course, have been perfect at once; but arising out of
accidental circumstances and accidental ideas, it naturally required
many fresh adjustments to make it consistent with itself, and to protect
it, by skilfully chosen words, against all the troublesome attacks of
theological ingenuity. This was not the work of a moment nor of a
century,—hundreds of years passed over before the doctrine assumed any
fixed form; nor was it until the thirteenth century that the present
form of the doctrine of three Gods, numerically one, was authoritatively
decreed.[465] Those who tell us of an “unimproved and unimprovable
Revelation,” must surely be strangely ignorant of the history of
Trinitarian Theology.

There are three Creeds of the Church of England, each of them to be
referred to distinct Periods of Ecclesiastical History, and becoming
more Unitarian in proportion as we approach the Apostolical times, more
Trinitarian in proportion as we recede from those times. These three
Creeds I shall make serve as heads under which to introduce my proofs of
the rise and progress of the Trinitarian Doctrine.

The _first_ Creed is UNITARIAN. It was the only Creed known to the
Church for three hundred and twenty-five years.

The _second_ Creed is _partly_ TRINITARIAN, fixing the Deity of Christ,
but saying nothing of the Deity of the Holy Spirit.

The _third_ Creed contains Trinitarianism, though not in its final and
perfected, yet in its boldest and most extravagant, forms.

The first Creed is known by the name of the Apostles’ Creed. It is not
known by whom it was written, nor when it was written;[466] but though
we have no verbatim copy of it until after the Nicene Council, but only
more or less of the substance, and some of its clauses are evidently of
a later date, it may substantially be regarded as descriptive of the
faith of the Church at an early age.[467] “The Christian system,” says
Mosheim, “as it was hitherto taught, preserved its native and beautiful
simplicity, and was comprehended in a small number of articles. The
public teachers inculcated no other doctrines than those that are
contained in what is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed; and in the
method of illustrating them, all vain subtleties, all mysterious
researches, everything that was beyond the reach of common capacities,
was carefully avoided. This will by no means appear surprising to those
who consider that, at this time, there was not the least controversy
about those capital doctrines of Christianity which were afterwards so
keenly debated in the Church; and who reflect that the bishops of those
primitive times were, for the most part, plain and illiterate men,
remarkable rather for their piety and zeal than for their learning and
eloquence.”—(_Eccles. Hist._ cent. ii. p. 11. ch. 3.)

Here, then, is the FIRST CREED of the Church, long reverenced as a
formula drawn up by the Apostles themselves, and perhaps still by some
unwittingly honoured as such. It contains some departures from the
simplicity of Gospel language, as in creed-making must necessarily
happen; for creeds are required only by those for whom the Scriptures
are not sufficiently definite or sufficiently safe. So far as it is a
Confession of faith, it demonstrates that the belief of the primitive
Church was strictly UNITARIAN.

_The Apostles’ Creed._

I believe in GOD (or, as the earlier notices of this Creed have it, “in
_one_ God,” also, “_one only_ God the Father Almighty”) the FATHER
ALMIGHTY, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son
our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried: he
descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he
ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of GOD, the FATHER
ALMIGHTY: from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead: I
believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of
saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the
life everlasting. Amen.

* * * * *

From the various transformations of this Creed in the pages of
Ecclesiastical writers, it is evident that it was not a fixed but a
growing formula, and that additions were freely made to it according as
the heresies of the time might seem to require the introduction of a new
clause. One thing, however, is plain, that the Ages which had their
faith stated in this creed had not yet confounded Jesus with God; that
he who is simply and solely described as the Son of God, crucified and
dying, rising from the grave, and sitting now on the right hand of the
Father Almighty, was not yet exalted into the Second Person of the
Trinity, equal to God in all things.

Now it is not a little remarkable, that many orthodox writers perceived
and deplored the lamentable deficiency of this faith of the primitive
Church; and some of them boldly declare, that the Christian Fathers were
not yet initiated in these high mysteries. “M. Jurieu,” quoted by
Jortin, “whose zeal against heresy is well known, assures us that the
fundamental articles of Christianity were not understood by the Fathers
of the three first centuries; that the true system began to be modelled
into some shape by the Nicene bishops, and was afterwards immensely
improved and beautified by the following synods and councils.”[468]

Bishop Bull declares, “that almost all the Catholic writers before
Arius’ time seem not to have known any thing of the invisibility and
immensity of the Son of God; and that they often speak of him in such a
manner as if, even in respect of his divine nature, he was _finite_,
_visible_, and _circumscribed in place_.” Such sentiments are only to be
paralleled by some passages from these Fathers themselves, who declare
that such notions as they had of the divinity of Christ they had derived
solely from the Gospel of St. John, and that the other Evangelists had
but an obscure knowledge of this subject. “None of them,” says Origen,
“disclosed his divinity so purely as John.”[469] “John,” says Eusebius,
“commenced with the doctrine of the divinity, that having been reserved
by the divine Spirit for him as the most worthy.”[470] And, later,
Chrysostom declares that the other Evangelists were like “little
children, who hear, but do not understand what they hear, being occupied
with cakes and childish playthings;” but John taught, “what the angels
themselves did not know before he declared it.” “This doctrine was not
published at first, for the world was not advanced to it. Matthew, Mark,
and Luke did not state what was suitable to his dignity, but what was
fitting for their hearers. John, the Son of Thunder, advanced at last to
the doctrine of the divinity.”[471]

I shall now cite some proofs from the Christian writers of the three
first centuries, to show that though, in correspondence with Platonic
doctrines, a derived and subordinate divinity was ascribed to Jesus,
nothing like the present orthodox faith was dreamed of, and that the
highest authorities on these subjects, Cudworth for instance, are fully
aware that, for nearly four hundred years, the Creeds of the Church
embraced nothing more than the Platonic Trinity.

And, first, I shall give one distinct testimony from Origen, to which
others might be added from Irenæus and Tertullian, of the _Unitarianism
of the Jewish Christians_:

“And when you consider the faith concerning our Saviour of those of the
Jews who believe in Jesus, some thinking him to be the son of Joseph and
Mary, and others of Mary only, and the divine Spirit, but still without
any belief in his divinity.”[472] “_And they of the Jews who have
received Jesus as the Christ_, go by the name of Ebionites.”[473]

* * * * *

I am next to cite evidence that, for the first three hundred years, the
Christian writers acknowledged _the inferiority of Jesus to his_ FATHER,
though ascribing to him a derived divinity. It is not until A. D. 140
that we find any very distinct mention even of this description of
divinity as belonging to Jesus.[474]

_Justin Martyr_, _A.D._ 140.

“I will endeavour to show that he who appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and
Moses, and who is called God, is different from the God that made all
things,—_numerically_ different, though not _in will_; for I say that he
never did any thing but what that GOD WHO MADE ALL THINGS, and above
whom there is no god, _willed_ that he should do and say.”[475]

_Irenæus_, _A.D._ 178.

“We hold the Rule of Truth, that there is ONE GOD ALMIGHTY, who created
all things by his Logos.” ... “This is the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ; and of Him it is that Paul declared, There is ONE GOD, even the
FATHER, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.”[476]

_Clemens Alexandrinus_, _A.D._ 194.

“There is one unbegotten almighty FATHER, and one first begotten, by
whom all things were, and without whom nothing was made. For one is
truly God, who made the _beginning_ of all things, meaning his
first-begotten son.”[477]

_Tertullian_, _A.D._ 200.

“I do not speak of Gods and Lords; but I follow the Apostle; so that if
the Father and the Son are to be named together, I call the Father God,
and Jesus Christ Lord: though I can call Christ God when speaking of
himself alone.” And he goes on to explain this by declaring, that a ray
of the sun may, with sufficient propriety, be called the sun.[478]

_Origen_, _A.D._ 230.

“We may by this means solve the doubts which terrify many men, who
pretend to great piety, and who are afraid of making two Gods, and,
through this, fall into vain and impious opinions; denying that the
nature of the Son is different from that of the Father, and who
acknowledge that he is God in name only; or denying the divinity of the
Son, and then maintaining that his nature and essence is different from
that of the Father. For we must tell them that he who is _God of
himself_, is THE God, as the Saviour states in his prayer to the Father,
‘that they may know thee, THE only true God;’ but that whosoever becomes
divine by partaking of his divinity, cannot be styled THE God, but _a_
God, among whom _especially is the first born of all creatures_.”[479]

_Novatian_, _A.D._ 251.

“He, although he was in the form of God, did not think of the robbery of
being equal with God. For though he knew that he was God, from God the
Father, he never likened or compared himself with God the Father,
remembering that he was from the Father, and that he had what he had
because the Father had given it to him.”[480]

_Lactantius_, _A.D._ 310.

“He showed his fidelity to God, in that he taught that there is ONE GOD,
and that he alone ought to be worshipped. Nor did he ever say that he
himself was God. For he would not have preserved his fidelity if, being
sent to take away a number of gods, and to assert ONE GOD, he had
introduced another besides that one. Wherefore, because he was so
faithful, because he arrogated nothing to himself, that he might fulfil
the commands of Him who sent him, he _received_ the dignity of perpetual
priest, and the honour of Supreme King, the power of a judge, and the
title of God.”[481]

And not inconveniently to multiply evidence, let us come at once to the
very orthodox Athanasius himself, and we shall find how little this
Father knew of the nice adjustments of that Creed which now passes under
his name.

_Athanasius_, _A.D._ 325.

“For there is one God, and there is not another besides Him. When it is
said that the Father is the only God, that he is one God, ‘I am the
FIRST,’ and ‘I am the LAST,’ it is well said. This is not said, however,
to take away from the Son; for he also is _in_ THE ONE, FIRST, and ONLY
ONE, as being the only _Logos_, Wisdom, and Effulgence of him who is THE
ONE, and THE ALONE, and THE SUPREME.”[482]

“And Athanasius himself, who is commonly accounted the very Rule of
Orthodoxality in this point, when he doth so often resemble the Father
to the _Sun_, or the _original Light_; and the Son to the _splendour or
brightness of it_, (as likewise doth the Nicene Council and the
Scripture itself,) he seems hereby to imply some dependence of the
Second upon the First, and subordination to it. Especially when he
declareth, that the _Three Persons_ of the _Trinity_ are not to be
looked upon as _Three Principles_, nor to be resembled to _Three Suns_,
but to the _Sun_, and its splendour, and _its derivative light_.”[483]

Now I may sum up the impression of these passages in the words of the
very learned Cudworth:—“But particularly as to their gradual
subordination of the _Second Hypostasis_ to the _First_, and of the
_Third_ to the _First and Second_, our Platonick Christian doubtless
would therefore plead them the more excusable, because the generality of
_Christian Doctors_, for the first three hundred years after the
Apostles’ times, plainly asserted the same; as Justin Martyr,
Athenagoras, Tatianus, Irenæus, the Author of the Recognitions,
Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Gregorius Thaumaturgus,
Dionysius of Alexandria, Lactantius, and many others. All whose
testimonies, because it would be too tedious to set down here, we shall
content ourselves with one of the last mentioned;—‘Both the Father and
Son is God: but he as it were an exuberant fountain, this as a stream
derived from him: He like to the sun, this like to a ray extended from
the sun.’ And though it be true, that Athanasius, writing against the
Arians, does appeal to the tradition of the antient Church, and amongst
others cites Origen’s testimony too; yet this was only for the Eternity
and Divinity of the Son of God, but not at all for such an absolute
_co-equality_ of him with the Father as would exclude all _dependence_,
_subordination_, and _inferiority_;[484] those antients so unanimously
agreeing therein, that they are by Petavius therefore taxed for
Platonism, and having by that means corrupted the purity of the
Christian Faith, in this article of the Trinity. Which how it can be
reconciled with those other opinions, of Ecclesiastic Tradition being a
Rule of Faith, and impossibility of the visible Churches erring in any
fundamental point, cannot easily be understood. However, this general
Tradition, or Consent of the Christian Church, for three hundred years
together after the Apostles’ times, though it cannot justify the
Platonists in anything discrepant from the Scripture, yet may it in some
measure doubtless plead their excuse, who had no Scripture Revelation at
all to guide them herein; and so at least make their error more
tolerable or pardonable.”[485]

We come now to a time when these floating and indefinite conceptions
were to assume more fixed forms. It is apparent that so far the
Christian Fathers fluctuated between their desire to exalt Jesus into
the Logos of God, and the restraining fear of adopting ideas or
expressions not reconcilable with the strict unity of the Deity. “The
suspense and fluctuation,” says Gibbon, “produced in the minds of the
Christians by these opposite tendencies, may be observed in the writings
of the theologians who flourished after the end of the apostolic age,
and before the origin of the Arian controversy. Their suffrage is
claimed with equal confidence by the orthodox and by the heretical
parties; and the most inquisitive critics have fairly allowed that if
they had the good fortune of possessing the Catholic Verity, they have
delivered their conceptions in loose, inaccurate, and sometimes
contradictory language.” Ideas so naturally irreconcilable, as Jesus
when contemplated as the Son of God, and Jesus when contemplated as the
Wisdom of God (Logos), with personality attached to it, were certain
sooner or later to betray their inconsistency, and to stand out from one
another in opposing attitudes. They could be held in combination only so
long as two very strong but opposite influences, (a desire to meet the
conceptions of the prevalent Philosophy, and a desire at the same time
to preserve unviolated the Jewish and Christian doctrine of the Unity of
God,) operated together to prevent theologians looking too closely into
their Faith, or attempting too strictly to harmonize its elements.

The elements of a necessary separation existed in that confused system
by which the earlier Fathers brought together Jesus the Christ, and the
Logos of the purer Platonists, into the same conception; some of them
inclining to the idea of the Son of God being an eternal emanation from
the Father, like light from the sun, veiling the difficulty of a Son
being co-eternal with his Father under the unmeaning phrase,
‘everlasting generation’—and some adopting the lower view that he was
only the highest emanation from the origin of all Spirits, the first of
created Beings, and the instrument of God in all the other works of
Creation. “These speculations,” says Gibbon, “became the most serious
business of the present, and most useful preparation for a future life.
A theology which it was incumbent to believe, which it was impious to
doubt, and which it might be dangerous and even fatal to mistake, became
the familiar topic of private meditation and popular discourse.[486] The
cold indifference of philosophy was inflamed by the fervent spirit of
devotion; and even the metaphors of common language suggested the
fallacious prejudices of sense and experience. The Christians, who
abhorred the gross and impure generation of the Greek mythology, were
tempted to argue from the familiar analogy of the filial and paternal
relations. The character of _Son_ seemed to imply a perpetual
subordination to the voluntary author of his existence; but as the act
of generation in the most spiritual and abstracted sense, must be
supposed to transmit the properties of a common nature, they durst not
presume to circumscribe the powers or the duration of the Son of an
eternal and omnipotent Father.—Their tender reverence for the memory of
Christ, and their horror for the profane worship of any created being,
would have engaged them to assert the equal and absolute divinity of the
_Logos_, if their rapid ascent toward the throne of heaven had not been
imperceptibly checked by the apprehension of violating the unity and
sole supremacy of the great Father of Christ and of the Universe.”

Christ, when viewed as the Wisdom or Logos of God, was by a natural
transition of thought placed within the effulgence of the divine glory;
but when viewed not as an Attribute but as a Person, the Son and Messiah
of the Father, this dim idea would pass away, and the distinction
between God and Christ become too visible to be confused. In this state
of opinion two parties naturally appeared, separating the two ideas that
entered into the prevalent conception of Christ, each taking up one of
them as representing _the whole_ truth respecting his nature and person.
The Arians, alarmed at the idea of two Gods, inclined to that part of
the conception which represented Jesus as the Son and Messenger of the
Father, but at the same time elevating him above all other created
beings, and giving him an existence before the worlds were. The
Athanasians, on the other hand, inclined to that part of the conception
which represented him as the Logos of the Deity, and under the reaction,
and the necessity for more strictly defining the hidden sense of
doctrines, produced by the Arian Creed, attempted to conquer the
difficulty of his Sonship by representing him as an eternal emanation
from the very substance of the Deity, and exalted him into an equality
with God, though at the same time they described it as a derived and
subordinate equality. It is unavoidable in describing these views to
make use of contradictory words. The ideas are irreconcilable, and were
only saved from plainly appearing so by being involved in a cloud of
mystical or rather no meaning words; for words must either be
significant of ideas, or no-sense. This then was the subject of the
great Arian and Trinitarian Controversy, which in the fourth Century
shook the peace of the world. It turned upon this point, whether Christ
was of the same essence as the Father, and therefore not created but
begotten or emanating; or whether he was as the Arians thought, made out
of nothing, and therefore a created Being. Neither of them contemplated
him as independent of the Supreme Deity, but the Athanasians regarded
him as a con-substantial and co-eternal emanation; the Arians, though
assigning him the highest rank, regarded him as created like other
beings. Such are the great questions of a metaphysical and dogmatical
religion. Such are the mysteries on which Synods and Councils have
legislated. Such are the subjects in which Ecclesiastics have shown more
interest than in the spirit of the life of Christ, and the moral hopes
and preparations of Immortality. Such are the subject matter of Creeds,
the dry husks of doctrine, the spiritless formulas on which souls are
starved, the bread of Christ converted into a stone, and yet in the eyes
of many, superior to practical discipleship, to Charity and the Love of
God, to the spirit of Brotherhood and the trustful faith of Duty.

It was to settle this dispute that the first general Council of the
Church was assembled at Nice A. D. 325. The Emperor Constantine attended
in person. He had previously remonstrated with the contending parties,
and entreated them not to disturb the peace of the Empire and of the
Church, for matters the most insignificant and small.[487] But he did
not know the temper of Controversialists; nor what things become
important in their eyes.[488] The Athanasians prevailed, and “the
con-substantiality of the Father and the Son was established by the
Council of Nice.” Under this word however lurked future Controversies,
and by con-substantiality the Council of Nice meant, not the present
doctrine of three persons in one God, but merely sameness of nature or
kind, such a sameness as three men may possess who are generically the
same but numerically different; and this is openly admitted by the
highest authorities, Petavius, Cudworth, Le Clerc, Jortin. “The
majority,” says Gibbon, “was divided into two parties, distinguished by
a contrary tendency to the sentiments of the Tritheists, and of the
Sabellians. But as those opposite extremes seemed to overthrow the
foundations either of natural or revealed religion, they mutually agreed
to qualify the rigour of their principles; and to disavow the just, but
invidious, consequences which might be urged by their antagonists. The
interest of the common cause inclined them to join their numbers, and to
conceal their differences; their animosities were softened by the
healing counsels of toleration, and their disputes were suspended by the
use of the mysterious _Homoousion_ (Consubstantial), which either party
was free to interpret according to their peculiar tenets. The Sabellian
sense, which about fifty years before had obliged the Council of Antioch
to prohibit this celebrated term, had endeared it to those theologians
who entertained a secret but partial affection for a nominal Trinity.
But the more fashionable saints of the Arian times, the intrepid
Athanasius, the learned Gregory Nazianzen, and the other pillars of the
Church, who supported with ability and success the Nicene doctrine,
appeared to consider the expression _of substance_ as if it had been
synonymous with that _of nature_; and they ventured to illustrate their
meaning, by affirming that three men, as they belong to the same common
species, are con-substantial or homoousian to each other. This pure and
distinct equality was tempered on the one hand by the internal
connection, and spiritual penetration, which indissolubly unites the
divine persons, and on the other by the pre-eminence of the Father,
which was acknowledged as far as it is compatible with the independence
of the son. Within these limits the almost invisible and tremulous ball
of Orthodoxy was allowed securely to vibrate. On either side beyond this
consecrated ground the heretics and the dæmons lurked in ambush to
surprise and devour the unhappy wanderer. But as the degrees of
theological hatred depend on the Spirit of the war, rather than on the
importance of the Controversy, the heretics who degraded, were treated
with more severity than those who annihilated the person of the
Son.”[489]

We are now arrived at that great period in the faith of the Church, when
the dignity of the Son was authoritatively settled by the Nicene
Council. Here is a brief account of its proceedings. “The Bishops began
by much personal dissension, and presented to the Emperor a variety of
written accusations against each other; the Emperor burnt all their
libels and exhorted them to peace and unity. They then proceeded to
examine the momentous question proposed to them. It was soon discovered
that the differences which it was intended to reconcile might in their
principle be reduced to one point, and that point might be expressed by
one _word_, and thus the question appears to have been speedily
simplified (as indeed was necessary that so many persons might come to
one conclusion on so mysterious a subject) and reduced to this—whether
the Son was or was not _consubstantial_ with the Father. Then arose
subtile disceptations respecting the meaning of the word, ‘about which
some conflicted with each other, dwelling on the term and minutely
dissecting it; it was like a battle fought in the dark; for neither
party seemed at all to understand on what ground they vilified each
other.’ However the result was perfectly conclusive; they finally
decided against the Arian opinions, and established respecting the two
first persons in the Trinity, the doctrine which the Church still
professes in the Nicene Creed.”[490]

This doctrine is as follows:—you will perceive that it is partly
Trinitarian, _and only partly_, a _derived_ deity being attributed to
the Son, _and no deity whatsoever_ attributed to the Holy Spirit.
Changes were afterwards introduced into this Creed to adapt it to the
growing orthodoxy of the times. I shall mention these in their proper
places; meanwhile I give the Nicene Creed of the Nicene Council:—

_The Nicene Creed_, _A.D._ 325.

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible
and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten
and only begotten of the Father; that is of the substance of the Father,
God of (out of) God, Light of (from) Light, very God of very God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, by whom all things
were made both in heaven and in earth: who for us men, and for our
salvation, descended and was incarnate, and was made man, suffered, and
rose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, and will come to
judge the living and the dead. (We believe) also in the Holy Ghost.

“The holy Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes those who say that
there was a time when the Son of God was not, and that before he was
begotten he was not, and that he was made out of nothing, or out of
another substance or essence, and is created, changeable, or alterable.”

“Such,” says Jortin, “was the Nicene Creed, as it stood originally and
before it was interpolated by subsequent Councils. Our church hath
dropped the anathematizing clauses at the end, and one cannot help
wishing that the Nicene Fathers had done the same. The Christians in
times following were perpetually making anathematisms, even upon the
slightest and poorest occasions; and it is really a wonder that they did
not at last insert in their Litanies, ‘We beseech Thee to curse and
confound the Pelagians, Semi-pelagians, Nestorians, Eutychians,
Monothelites, Jacobites, Iconoclasts, and all heretics and
schismatics.’”[491]

The history of the fourth century is almost entirely taken up with the
persecutions of Consubstantialists against Arians, Arians against
Consubstantialists, and the minor strifes of the subdivisions of these
sects. After the death of Constantine, the Emperor Constantius sided
with the Arians, and then the persecuted became the persecutors, for
wherever a dogmatical Religion is held, wherever Creeds are the
Essentials of Salvation, of course no Charity can be learned in the
School of Suffering. There is an admirable passage contained in
Archdeacon Jortin’s most instructive remarks on Ecclesiastical History.
It extorts a smile to observe with what unconsciousness dogmatic
Theologians of all ages insult their fellow-disciples, in the name and
for the love of God, and close their acts of persecution with the words
of affection and blessing:—

“In the fourth century were held thirteen Councils against Arius,
fifteen for him, and seventeen for the Semiarians; in all
forty-five.[492]

“How could the Arians, in the time of Constantius and Valens, bring
themselves to such an un-christian persecuting temper? How could they
oppress their fellow-Christians, the Consubstantialists, who, supposing
them to have been in error, fell into it through a religious fear of
ascribing too little to their Redeemer, and of not paying him sufficient
honour? Can a man love his saviour, and hate his brother for a mistake
of this kind?

“And how could the Consubstantialists persuade themselves that an Arian,
who perhaps had suffered for professing Christianity in times of
distress, who believed Christ to be his Maker, his Saviour, his King,
and his Judge, would choose to detract from his dignity, and to offend
him in whom he placed all his hopes of salvation? Human nature is not
capable of this folly; and if the man were in an error, yet in such a
person the error must have been involuntary, a mere defect of the
understanding, and not a fault of the will.

“A Christian and a lover of peace, who lived in obscurity, and whose
name I cannot tell, stood up and said:—‘My brethren, the things to be
believed are few, the things to be done are many: but you behave
yourselves as if the reverse of this were true. St. Paul tells you, “The
grace of God that bringeth Salvation hath appeared to all men; teaching
us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly, in this present world, looking for that blessed
hope, and the glorious appearance of the great God, and (of) our
Saviour, Jesus Christ.” Concerning the nature of _Jesus_ you can dispute
incessantly, and concerning the word _Grace_, you will probably dispute
no less; but the rest of the sentence you disregard as of small
consequence or importance. What, I beseech you, must the Jews and the
Pagans conceive of you and of your religion? And what do the holy angels
think, who look down upon your contentions? Those blessed and
compassionate spirits pity you, and think you mere children. But when
from contending you proceed to beating your fellow-servants, to
persecuting and destroying, they consider you as most malicious and
wicked children; their pity is changed into indignation, and they would
strike you dead, if the Supreme Governor did not stay their hand, and
remind them that such disorders must needs arise, and shall one day be
rectified.’

“So said this _Unknown_; but behold the consequence! The
Consubstantialists called him an Arian, and the Arians called him a
Consubstantialist.

“The Nicene Fathers having anathematized the Arians, the Emperor
seconded them, and banished Arius and the bishops who sided with him,
and ordered the books of Arius to be burnt; and added, ‘If any man be
found to have concealed a copy of those books, and not to have instantly
produced it and thrown it into the fire, he shall be put to death. The
Lord be with you all!’”[493]—(_Eccles. Hist._ vol. ii. p. 205.)

I shall now summon two authorities, the one Cudworth, the other Jortin,
to prove that the Nicene Fathers had no knowledge of the present
doctrine of the Trinity, and that they believed Christ to be the same
with God, not numerically, but as partaking of the same nature,
belonging to the same class of beings:—“Wherefore it seemeth to be
unquestionably evident, that when the ancient orthodox Fathers of the
Christian Church maintained against Arius, the Son to be Co-essential or
Consubstantial with the Father, though the word be thus interpreted, _of
the same essence or substance_, yet they universally understood thereby,
not a _sameness of singular and numerical_, but of common or universal
essence only; that is the generical or specifical Essence of the
Godhead; that the Son was no _Creature_, but truly and properly
God.” * * *

“We have now given a full account of the true and genuine _Platonic_
Trinity; from which it may clearly appear, how far it either agreeth or
disagreeth with the _Christian_. First, therefore, though some of the
later Platonists have partly misunderstood, and partly adulterated that
ancient _Cabala_ of the Trinity, as was before declared, confounding
therein the _differences_ between God and the Creature, and thereby
laying a foundation for infinite Polytheism; yet did _Plato himself_ and
some of his genuine followers, (_though living before Christianity_,)
approach so near to the doctrine thereof, as in some manner to
correspond therewith.” ... “From whence it may be concluded, that as
_Arianism_ is commonly supposed to approach nearer to the truth of
Christianity than Photinianism, so is _Platonism_ undoubtedly more
agreeable thereunto than Arianism, it being a certain middle thing,
betwixt that and Sabellianism, _which in general_ was that mark that the
Nicene Council also aimed at.”

This is more fully explained in the next extract:—

“Athanasius in sundry places still further supposes those _three divine
hypostases_ to make up one entire divinity, after the same manner as the
_Fountain_ and the _Stream_ make up one entire _river_; or the _root_,
and the _stock_, and the _branches_, one entire tree. And in this sense
also is the whole Trinity said by him to be one Divinity, and one
Nature, and one Essence, and one God. And accordingly, the word
Homoousios (Consubstantial) seems here to be taken by Athanasius in a
further sense besides that before mentioned; not only for things
agreeing in one common and general essence, as _Three individual men_
are co-essential with one another; but also for such as concurrently
together, make up one entire thing, and are therefore jointly essential
thereunto.—In all which doctrine of his there is nothing but what a true
and genuine Platonist would readily subscribe to. From whence it may be
concluded, that the right Platonic Trinity differs not so much from the
doctrine of the Ancient Church, as some late writers have
supposed.”—(_Intellec. Sys._ p. 591, 608, 619-20.)[494]

“But here it will be asked, perhaps, what was the doctrine of the Nicene
Fathers, and what did they mean by Consubstantiality. It is impossible
to answer this question without using logical and metaphysical terms.

“By the word _Consubstantial_, they meant not of the same numerical, or
individual substance, but of the same generical substance or
subsistence. As, amongst men, a son is _consubstantial_ with his father;
so, in their opinion, the Son of God is consubstantial with the Father,
that is, of the same divine nature.

“By this word therefore they intended to express _the same kind of
nature_, and so far, _a natural equality_. But according to them, this
natural equality excluded not a relative inequality; a _majority_ and
_minority_, founded upon the everlasting difference between _giving_ and
_receiving_, _causing_, and being _caused_.

“They had no notion of distinguishing between _person_ and _being_,
between an _intelligent agent_, and an intelligent active substance,
subsistence, or entity.

“When they said that the Father was _God_, they meant that he was God of
_himself, originally, and underived_.

“When they said that the Son was _God_, they meant that he was God by
_generation_ or _derivation_.

“The Unity of God they maintained, and they defended it, first, by
considering the Father as the First Cause, the only underived and
self-existing; secondly, by supposing an intimate, inseparable, and
incomprehensible union, connection, indwelling, and co-existence, by
which the Father was in the Son, and the Son in the Father; and thirdly,
by saying that in the Father and the Son there was an unity of will,
design, and consent, and one divine power and dominion, originally in
the Father, and derivatively in the Son.

“In process of time, Christians went into a notion that the Son was ‘of
the same individual substance with the Father, and with the Holy
Spirit,’ and they seem to have done this with a view to secure the
doctrine of the _Unity_.

“The schoolmen took up the subject, and treated it in their way, which
they call _explaining_, and which men of sense call _impenetrable
jargon_.”—(_Jortin, Eccles. Hist._ vol. ii. p. 202.)

You will observe, that so far no mention had been made of the separate
deity of the Holy Spirit. The original Nicene Creed is silent upon the
subject. It was a question that grew out of the deity of Christ. The
philosophy of the times, no less than the reluctance to be deemed the
followers of a crucified man, led to the deification of Jesus, and
afterwards, from the personifications of the Holy Spirit, in such
expressions as “I will send unto you the Comforter, even the Spirit of
Truth,” and from its frequent connection with the name and mission of
Christ, arose the idea of a separate divinity, a third person in the
Trinity. The Platonic Trinity would indeed have naturally led the early
Fathers to the conception of a third principle, and in some of the
Anti-Nicene Writers this conception appears; but the Controversy was
carried on with almost exclusive reference to the deity of Christ, which
independent of the general burden of their writings, clearly appears
from the fact, that when defending themselves against the charge of
violating the Unity of God, they always state the objection, so as to
show that the accusation against them was that they were “introducing a
_second_ God.”

Accordingly it was after the Council at Nice, when the deity of the Son
was established, that orthodoxy took a second and consequent step, and
proceeded to establish the deity of the third person in the
Trinity.[495]

This was effected towards the close of the fourth century, A.D. 381, by
the Second General Council, that of Constantinople, when the following
addition was made to the previously deficient orthodoxy of the Nicene
Creed. The Nicene Creed had simply stated, “We believe in the Holy
Ghost.” The Council of Constantinople rectified the error thus: “We
believe in the Holy Ghost, _the Lord and Giver_ of life; who proceedeth
from the Father; who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and
glorified; who spake by the prophets.” Still, however, the adjustments
were not correct, nor the formula of perfect orthodoxy. It occurred to
the Church, centuries after, that the Holy Spirit was described in the
Scriptures as being dependent not upon the Father alone, but as being
“sent” by the Son; and that therefore the Third Person must hold that
relation to the Second which the Second did to the Third, and must
therefore be derived not from the Father alone, but from the Father and
Son together.[496] Accordingly this new idea, essential to Salvation,
was included in the formula so long in this respect defective, with what
fatal consequences we are not told; and at last, in the ninth century, a
perfectly accurate and saving description of the procession of the Holy
Spirit from the Father and the Son was embodied in the Nicene Creed,
some five hundred years after its first construction. So slowly did the
“unimproved and unimprovable revelation” of dogmatic divines advance to
its perfection. Yet we are gravely told of the faith of the Church,—a
faith human all over; and of the traditions of Christian
antiquity,—traditions whose origin we can trace at a great distance from
apostolic times, and whose constant increase, in proportion as we recede
from those times, would seem to imply that the further Councils of the
Church were removed from the Apostles the more they knew about them—the
accuracy of inspired Tradition differing, as of course it should, from
common Memory and common History, by being in an inverse ratio to the
distance. This is no subject for ridicule; but only the sacred feelings
and high themes that are necessarily associated with such extravagance,
have so long saved it from the most merciless exposure. Those solemn
themes, the awe and loveliness of which Ecclesiastical History has done
its best to lower and degrade, have yet repaid the disservice by
dropping something of their own solemnity on its unworthy pages, and by
taking every thing that is associated with God and Christ within the
protection of the sentiment of reverence, have shielded Ecclesiastical
History from that unsparing criticism which perhaps would have been more
serviceable to Truth, and productive of a reverence higher and more
profitable towards both Christ and God.

In the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, the settlement of one
Controversy always gave birth to another, in the progressive attempt to
make mysteries intelligible. The deity of Christ naturally gave rise to
some curiosity respecting the humanity of Christ. Hitherto all parties,
Arians, Athanasians, and Unitarians, according to their respective
views, had for the most part agreed that the Christ consisted of one
body and one spirit; and their controversies related simply to the rank
and nature of that spirit. The Arians believed the soul of Jesus to be
the first of created intelligences, the highest Emanation from God. The
Platonic Christians thought that the Logos used instrumentally the body
of Jesus, and supplied the place of a human soul. When the Council of
Nice, however, established that the spirit of Jesus was _consubstantial_
with that of God, the idea naturally presented itself that, since Jesus
expired upon the cross, this was to represent the divine nature as
capable of suffering and death. Now those who were the most orthodox,
whose views and language receded to the extremest distance from those of
the heretical Arians, would necessarily fall into modes of conception
and expression which implied this revolting extravagance. Accordingly
Apollinaris, one of the most zealous Athanasians, and the bitter enemy
of Arius, freely, and unconscious of heresy, followed out his principles
with perverse consistency, and openly spoke of the Logos of God
supplying the place of a human soul in the body of Christ; and, of
course, undergoing all that a spirit, so situated, could suffer.[497]
But so narrow is the way of orthodoxy, that the zealous Father was made
quickly to discover that by starting aside from one heresy, only a
little too sharply, he had immediately fallen into another; for the
pitfalls of damnable error lie upon each side of the hair-breadth way of
Salvation. By pursuing too exclusively the deity of Christ, Apollinaris
overlooked his humanity, and taught the heresy of “one incarnate
nature,” and the consequent sufferings and death of God. This impious
extreme, being condemned by the Asiatic Church, though popular in Egypt,
orthodoxy naturally took a rebound; and Apollinaris, having confused the
two natures into one, Nestorius separated them into two, to such an
extent, as virtually to destroy the mystical union. Here was another and
an opposite heresy equally fatal to the orthodoxy of the Church and the
salvation of mankind; for if such was the loose connection of the two
natures, then, God being incapable of suffering, only the human nature
of Jesus underwent crucifixion and death. But, on the other hand, if
this was so, then the sufferings of Christ were only those of a _man_;
and all the mystery of the Incarnation was dissipated, and became
ineffectual for any theological purpose.

A new controversy consequently arose, respecting the right adjustments
of these saving connections between the humanity and the deity of the
Christ. “Before this time,” says Mosheim, “it had been settled by the
decrees of former Councils, that Christ was truly God and truly man; but
there had as yet been no controversy, and no decision of any council,
concerning the mode and effect of the union of the two natures in
Christ. In consequence, there was a want of agreement among the
Christian Teachers in their language concerning this mystery.” This
controversy, which, for some time had been carried on without attracting
towards it definitively the public authorities of the Church, drew at
last the eager notice of all Christendom; when Nestorius, the Prelate of
Constantinople, carried the distinction between the two natures to so
definite a point as to deny that the Virgin Mary could, with any
propriety, be denominated the “Mother of God;” and that her titles
should be limited to that of “Mother of Christ” or “Mother of Man.” This
was regarded, by the orthodox, as reducing the death of Christ to that
of a mere man, and the mystery of the Incarnation to little better than
a trick of words. It was no easy matter in those times to avoid, on the
one hand, confounding the two natures; and, on the other, separating
them so distinctly as to destroy the whole theological value of the
mystical combination: nor have modern Theologians been more successful
in adjusting this puzzle than their perplexed and perplexing
predecessors.

The chief alarmist upon this occasion of the heresy of Nestorius was
Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, an arrogant and aspiring man, who
gladly seized upon a tempting opportunity to humble his rival, the
bishop of Constantinople. “Some jealousy which at that time subsisted
respecting the relative dignity of the two sees, probably heightened the
contention, and is believed by some to have caused it. Whether that be
or not, the two Patriarchs anathematized each other with mutual
violence; and such troubles were raised that the Emperor (Theodosius the
younger) deemed it necessary to convoke a General Council for the
purpose of appeasing them. It was assembled at Ephesus A.D. 431, and
stands in the annals of the Church as the THIRD GENERAL COUNCIL. Cyril
was appointed to preside, and consequently to judge the cause of his
adversary: and he carried into this office such little show of
impartiality, that he refused even to wait for the arrival of the bishop
of Antioch and others, who were held friendly to Nestorius, and
proceeded to pronounce sentence, while the meeting was yet incomplete.
To secure or prosecute his advantages, he had brought with him from
Egypt a number of robust and daring fanatics, who acted as his soldiery;
and it had been skilfully arranged that Ephesus should be chosen for the
decision of a difference respecting the dignity of the Virgin; since
popular tradition had buried her in that city, and the imperfect
Christianity of its inhabitants had readily transferred to her the
worship which their ancestors had offered to Diana.”[498]

Such are the assemblies from which our Creeds date their birth; by whose
authority the Rule of Faith was determined; and whose character is
described in the words of the Emperor Theodosius when dismissing this
very Council of Ephesus—“God is my witness, that I am not the author of
this confusion. His providence will discern and punish the guilty.
Return to your provinces; and may your private virtues repair the
mischief and scandal of your meeting.” At this council it was decreed,
by bishops who could not write their own names,[499] that the Union of
the human and divine nature in Christ was so intimate that Mary might
properly be called the Mother of God. The influence of Cyril prevailed
chiefly by intimidating the bishops and bribing the imperial household.
“Thanks to the purse of St. Cyril,” says Le Clerc, “the Romish Church
which regards Councils as infallible, is not, at the present day,
Nestorian.” “The Creeds of _Protestants_ are equally indebted to St.
Cyril for their purity.”[500]

The triumphant opponents of Nestorius, as is invariably found in the
history of Church Controversies, pushed their triumph to such an excess,
as to fall into the opposite error, and revived the formerly condemned
heresy of Apollinaris, of the incarnation of but one nature. Eutyches
the friend of St. Cyril and the bitter enemy of Nestorius, openly
preached “that in Christ there was but one nature, that of the incarnate
Word.” The Church was again in a blaze, and again the Emperor summoned a
Council at Ephesus, A.D. 449, over which presided Dioscorus, the
successor of St. Cyril as Patriarch of Alexandria. Here the sentence of
the last Council was reversed, and Orthodoxy was pronounced to be the
doctrine of one divine nature in Christ, and only one. This Council,
however, owing principally to the opposition made to it by the Bishop of
Rome, was never authoritatively recognized by the Church, and such was
its character for tumult and brutality that it is marked in
Ecclesiastical History by the expressive name of the Assembly of
Banditti.

Speedily then was this heresy, inconveniently sanctioned by a Council of
the Church, of only one nature in Christ, which in effect represented
God as subject to suffering and death, replaced by the orthodoxy of two
natures in one person, which was attended, however, with the opposite
difficulty of so separating the God from the Man as to nullify the
mystical efficacy of his sufferings.[501] But who will devise a form of
words in which irreconcilable ideas shall be reconciled, and no weak
point be exposed in the skilful statement of a fiction? THE FOURTH
GENERAL COUNCIL of the Church was held at Chalcedon, A.D. 451. There are
two things most remarkable respecting this Council; first—that it
declared Jesus to be of the same essence with God as to his divine
nature, only in the sense in which he was of the same essence with other
men as to his human nature, thus denying his _numerical_ oneness with
God, and merely referring him to the same class of Beings, making him
generically one, as two men are;[502] and secondly—that though the
majority of the Bishops favoured the doctrine of one nature, they were
obliged by the obstinacy of the Emperor Marcian, in conjunction with the
Bishop of Rome, to reverse at one of their sittings their decision at a
former, and finally to decree that orthodoxy consisted in believing
“Jesus Christ to be one person in two distinct natures, without any
confusion or mixture.” “It was in vain,” says Gibbon, “that a multitude
of episcopal voices (the advocates for only one nature) repeated in
chorus ‘The definition of the Fathers is orthodox and immutable! The
heretics are now discovered! Anathema to the Nestorians! Let them depart
from the synod! Let them repair to Rome!’ The Legates threatened, the
Emperor was absolute, and a committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new
decree, which was imposed on the reluctant assembly. In the name of the
fourth general Council, the Christ in one person, but _in_ two natures,
was announced to the Catholic world: an invisible line was drawn between
the heresy of Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to
paradise, a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by
the master hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of
blindness and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions from the
Oracle of the Vatican; and the same doctrine, already varnished with the
rust of antiquity, was admitted without dispute into the creed of the
Reformers, who disclaimed the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The synod
of Chalcedon still triumphs in the Protestant churches; but the ferment
of controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the
present day are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief concerning
the mystery of the incarnation.”[503]

Still the great difficulty pressed upon this decision, that the God was
so separable from the man as to destroy the mystical value of the
incarnation with respect to the sufferings of Jesus. A resource was
found, (for when are Theologians without resources?) in what has been
called the doctrine of the Communication of Properties, which meant that
though God was incapable of sufferings or death, yet that through the
mystical union of the human and divine, there might be a transmission of
qualities from the one to the other, so as to attach an infinite
efficacy to the sufferings and death of the human part of the compound
Christ. “The doctrine of the Communication of Properties,” says Le
Clerc, “is as intelligible as if one were to say, that there is a circle
which is so united with a triangle, that the circle has the properties
of the triangle, and the triangle those of the circle.” “What sense
those who have asserted the sufferings of God have fancied that the
words might have, is a question which, after all that has been written
upon the subject, is left very much to conjecture. I imagine that it is
at the present day, the gross conception of some who think themselves
orthodox on this point, that the divine and human natures being united
in Christ as the Mediator, a compound nature different from either,
capable of suffering, was thus formed.”[504]

I have now detailed the progress of the doctrine of the Trinity, as it
gained accessions from the various controversies that arose out of the
Nicene Creed. We come now to the THIRD CREED of the English Church, that
of Athanasius. Orthodoxy in this creed approaches to its perfection of
precise, if not intelligible, statements; though, strange to say, we
shall find that even here something of completeness is wanting, and that
the later schemes of the Trinity have corrected the Athanasian formula,
as dwelling too much upon the derived nature of the Son, and not
asserting with sufficient force his independent identity.

No general Council of the Church established the Athanasian creed; nor
does any one know who wrote it, nor when it was first introduced. From
one of its clauses, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father
and Son, which secret was not made known to the Church until the eighth
century, it becomes evident that this theological paradox proceeded from
the ingenuity of some monk of the dark ages. The whole force of this
Creed depends upon two distinctions, which I presume no one can
perceive, between “created” and “begotten,” and between “begotten” and
“proceeding.” The Son is not _created_ but _begotten_—and the Holy Ghost
is not _begotten_ but _proceeding_. And this is _saving_ truth! food for
the Soul! the heavenly light sent from God to refresh man’s inner
spirit, and to fill him with the aspirations after perfection, which in
this world of temptation are to keep him true to his immortal destinies,
to connect him with his Example and Fore-runner, once tried upon the
Earth, now peaceful amid the skies! To one asking, “What shall I do to
inherit eternal life?” the answer of Jesus addressed itself to the
spiritual life of the disciple, but the answer of the Church of England
addresses itself to a perception of certain metaphysical distinctions,
and is contained in that creed which “unless a man keep whole and
undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.”

_The Athanasian Creed._ (_A.D._ 500-800.)

Whosoever will be saved: before all things it is necessary that he hold
the Catholick Faith.

Which Faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt
he shall perish everlastingly.

And the Catholick Faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and
Trinity in Unity;

Neither confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance.

For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son: and another
of the Holy Ghost.

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all
one: the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

Such as the Father is, such is the Son: and such is the Holy Ghost.

The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate: and the Holy Ghost uncreate.

The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible: and the Holy
Ghost incomprehensible.

The Father eternal, the Son eternal: and the Holy Ghost eternal.

And yet they are not three eternals: but one eternal.

As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated: but
one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.

So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty: and the Holy Ghost
Almighty.

And yet they are not three Almighties: but one Almighty.

So the Father is God, the Son is God: and the Holy Ghost is God.

And yet they are not three Gods: but one God.

So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord: and the Holy Ghost Lord.

And yet not three Lords: but one Lord.

For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity: to acknowledge
every Person by himself to be God and Lord;

So are we forbidden by the Catholick Religion: to say, There be three
Gods, or three Lords.

The Father is made of none: neither created, nor begotten.

The Son is of the Father alone: not made, nor created, but begotten.

The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son: neither made, nor
created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons: one
Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.

And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other: none is greater, or
less than another;

But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together: and co-equal.

So that in all things, as is aforesaid: the Unity in Trinity, and the
Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped.

He therefore that will be saved: must thus think of the Trinity.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation: that he also
believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess: that our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man;

God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds: and
Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world;

Perfect God, and perfect Man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh
subsisting;

Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead: and inferior to the
Father, as touching his Manhood.

Who although he be God and Man: yet he is not two, but one Christ;

One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the
Manhood into God;

One altogether; not by confusion of Substance: but by unity of Person.

For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man: so God and Man is one
Christ;

Who suffered for our salvation: descended into hell, rose again the
third day from the dead.

He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand of the Father, God
Almighty: from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies: and shall
give account for their own works.

And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting: and they
that have done evil into everlasting fire.

This is the Catholick Faith: which, except a man believe faithfully, he
cannot be saved.

I shall now give you the history and character of this Athanasian Creed
in the words of Waddington, one of the ablest Ecclesiastical Historians,
I might say the ablest, for Jortin did not pretend to write a History,
that the Church of England has produced. You will recollect that one of
the Lectures, to be delivered at Christ Church, announces “the
Athanasian Creed to be explained and defended.” Without wishing to
anticipate that Lecture, hear now, and recollect then, the opposing
voices of the Church.

“Before we take leave of this period, (from A.D. 600, to A.D. 800,) it
is proper to mention, that the first appearance of the Creed, commonly
called Athanasian, is ascribed to it with great probability. There can
be no doubt that this exposition of faith was composed in the West, and
in Latin; but the exact date of its composition has been the subject of
much difference. The very definite terms, in which it expresses the
Church doctrine of the Incarnation, are sufficient to prove it posterior
to the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, or later than the middle of
the fifth century.[505] Again, if we are to consider the doctrine of the
_double_ procession of the Holy Spirit, as being expressly declared in
it, since that mystery was scarcely made matter of public controversy
until the eighth century, it might seem difficult to refer a creed,
positively asserting the more recent doctrine, to an earlier age. But
the historical monuments of the Church do not quite support this
supposition; the Creed, such probably as it now exists, is mentioned by
the Council of Autun, in the year 670, and its faithful repetition by
the Clergy enjoined; and we find the same injunction repeated in the
beginning of the ninth age. Thus it gradually gained ground;
nevertheless there seems to be great reason for the opinion, that it was
not universally received even in the western church until nearly two
centuries afterwards.

“Considered as an exposition of doctrine, the Athanasian Creed contains
a faithful summary of the high mysteries of Christianity as interpreted
by the Church of Rome. Considered as a rule of necessary faith enforced
by the penalty of Eternal Condemnation, the same Creed again expresses
one of the most rigid principles of the same Church. The Unity of the
Church comprehended Unity of belief: there could be no salvation out of
it; nor any hope for those who deviated even from the most mysterious
among its tenets. And thus, by constant familiarity with the
declarations of an exclusive faith, the heart of many a Romish priest
may have been closed against the sufferings of the heretic, rescued (as
he might think) by the merciful chastisement of the Church from the
flames which are never quenched!

“It would be irrelevant in this work, and wholly unprofitable, to
inquire how far any temporary circumstances may have justified the
introduction of the Athanasian Creed into the Liturgy of our own
Church—constructed as that Church is on the very opposite principle of
Universal Charity. But we cannot forbear to offer one remark naturally
suggested by the character and history of this Creed, that if at any
future time, it should be judged expedient to expunge it, there is no
reason, there is scarcely any prejudice which could be offended by such
erasure.[506] The sublime truths which it contains are not expressed in
the language of Holy Scripture; nor could they possibly have been so
expressed, since the inspired writers were not studious minutely to
expound inscrutable mysteries, neither can it plead any sanction from
high antiquity, or even traditional authority; since it was composed
many centuries after the times of the Apostles, in a very corrupt age of
a corrupt Church, and composed in so much obscurity, that the very pen
from which it proceeded is not certainly known to us. The inventions of
men, when they have been associated for ages with the exercises of
religion, should indeed be touched with respect and discretion; but it
is a dangerous error to treat them as inviolable; and it is something
worse than error to confound them in holiness and reverence with the
words and things of God.”[507]

In reading these words the wish involuntarily arises that the temper, as
well as the sound learning and philosophical spirit, of the able writer
was shared by all his brethren. Yet it does sound strange to hear a
dignitary of the Church of England describe a Creed of his own Church,
as having its only use, during the days of Romish intolerance, in
shutting up, through familiarity with its persecuting spirit, the
avenues of relenting mercy in the hard hearts of priests; and now in the
milder Church of England, constructed, we are told, though we had not
discovered it, on the “principle of Universal Charity,” of absolutely no
use whatever, so that there hardly exists even a prejudice which its
erasure would offend. Yet this is the very Creed which, in the course of
this controversy is to be explained and defended. If the Church of
England is, indeed, founded in the principle of Universal Charity, some
of its Ministers are very heretical interpreters of its spirit, and yet
we must do them the justice of confessing that the Creeds and Articles
of the Church are equally unfortunate expounders of the spirit of
Universal Charity. Men of Christian and gentle temper interpret Articles
of Faith through their own gentle spirit; but fanatics read hard
formulas with different eyes. We can only wish that the religion of this
excellent historian was the religion of his Church, and that his Creed
was as Christian as his heart.

I have now only to mention the more modern and final form of the
doctrine of the Trinity. It arose out of the still unsettled meaning of
the long used word _Consubstantial_, which, as I have before stated, was
used by many of the later Fathers, and those considered pre-eminently
orthodox, as Cyril, to signify not a numerical sameness, but merely a
sameness of species or nature, and so the Trinity virtually taught the
doctrine of three Gods. And this conception was prevalent not only after
the Council of Nice, A.D. 325, but after the later Councils of
Constantinople, A.D. 381, and of Ephesus, A.D. 431. I give the history
of the last transformation of the Trinity in the words, and with the
authority of Cudworth:—

“It is certain that not a few of those Ancient Fathers, who were
therefore reputed orthodox, because they zealously opposed Arianism, did
entertain this opinion, that the three hypostases or Persons of the
Trinity had not only one _General and Universal Essence of the Godhead_,
belonging to them all, they being all God; but were also _Three
Individuals_, under one and the same ultimate species, or specific
essence and substance of the Godhead; just as three individual men,
(Thomas, Peter, and John,) under that ultimate species of _Man_, or that
specific essence of _Humanity_, which have only a numerical difference
from one another.” ... “And because it seems plainly to follow from
hence, that therefore they must needs be as much _three Gods_ as there
are Three Men, these learned Fathers endeavoured with their logic to
prove, that _Three Men_ are but abusively and improperly so called
_Three_; they being really and truly but One, because there is but _one
and the same Specific Essence or Substance of human nature_ in them all;
and seriously persuaded men to lay aside all that kind of language. By
which same logic of theirs, they might as well prove also, that all the
men in the world are but _One Man_, and that all Epicurus’s Gods were
but one God neither. But not to urge here that, according to this
hypothesis, there cannot possibly be any reason given why there should
be as many as _Three_ such individuals in the _species of God_ which
differ only numerically from one another, they being but the very same
thing thrice repeated; and yet that there should be no more than Three
such neither, and not Three Hundred, or Three Thousand, or as many as
there are individuals in the species of Man; we say not to urge this, it
seems plain that this _Trinity_, is no other than a kind of _Tritheism_,
and that of _Gods independent_ and _co-ordinate_ too. And, therefore,
some would think that the ancient and genuine Platonic Trinity, taken
with all its faults, is to be preferred before this Trinity of St.
Cyril, and St. Gregory Nyssen, and several other reputed orthodox
Fathers; and more agreeable to the principles both of _Christianity_ and
of _Reason_. However, it is evident from hence, that these reputed
orthodox Fathers, who were not a few, were far from thinking the three
hypostases of the Trinity to have _the same singular existent essence_;
they supposing them to have no otherwise, one and the same essence of
the Godhead in them, nor to be one God, than three individual Men, have
one common _specifical essence of Manhood_ in them, and are all One Man.
But as this _Trinity_ came afterwards to be decried for _Tritheistic_,
so, in the room thereof, started up that other Trinity of Persons
_numerically the same_, or having all one and the same singular existent
essence; _a doctrine which seemeth not to have been owned by any public
authority in the Christian Church, save that of the Lateran Council
only_.”[508]

Such is the close of the Ecclesiastical History of the doctrine of the
Trinity. The fourth general Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, which
established the doctrine of Transubstantiation, the growth of the dark
ages, passed also out of the hands of theological artists, in its
perfected and orthodox form, this singular evidence of the fixed and
primitive faith of those who taunt Unitarianism with its want of
fixedness, and describe their own creeds as the “unimproved and
unimprovable revelation.” It is this workmanship of Councils which is so
confidently referred to the inspiration of Apostles. No wonder that they
who preach orthodoxy as saving Faith, revealed from the first by God in
a perfect form, say so little to their hearers of the history of their
creeds. There is good reason why Ecclesiastical History should be little
encouraged by the divines of the English, or of any other dogmatical
Church. It is with good reason that the Universities show about the same
degree of favour to Ecclesiastical History and to Moral Philosophy. They
have an instinct that tells them of their enemies.

Let me now summarily restate the obligations of the doctrine of the
Trinity to the _human_ and _erring_ sources of OPINION.

I. Oriental philosophy led the Jews of Alexandria, before the time of
Christ, to _allegorize_ the Old Testament Scriptures.

II. The Jews of Alexandria formed the connecting link between
Christianity and Grecian Philosophy.

III. Platonic Theology put its own mythological meanings on the
expressions _Logos_, and _Son of God_.[509]

IV. At the beginning of the fourth century this mythological conception
had gained such ground that, with a severe struggle, and a controversy
that shook the world, a general Council decreed that Christ in his
divine nature belonged _to the same class_ of Beings with God.

V. In a _second_ general Council, the third Person in the Platonic
Trinity found, by public authority, a parallel in the Christian Trinity,
and became, for the first time, the faith of the Church.

VI. A _third_ general Council, A.D. 431, distinguished, for theological
purposes, the deity from the humanity of Christ.

VII. A _fourth_ general Council, A.D. 451, found it necessary, for
theological purposes, to unite the deity and humanity in _one person_.

VIII. The fourth general Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, consummated the
Trinity and prepared the way for the Inquisition. Having established
such a faith, it became necessary to take means to enforce it.
Persecution is the first-born of Dogmatism. In the phrase of Robert
Hall, quoted with approbation in Christ Church as a felicitous
expression, orthodoxy is “_necessitated_” to be a Persecutor, to treat
as a Dæmon and Enemy of Souls every form of Christianity but her own. It
is a necessity of her nature, she pleads,—a simple consistency with her
own principles. True,—the reasoning is without a flaw;—but then a
question arises, does a Nature of which these are the “_necessities_”
breathe the spirit of Jesus? Who can think of Jesus as being
_necessitated_ to condemn any thing but _sin_?

Having shown how much the doctrine of the Trinity has to do with
Ecclesiastical History, I have now to show how little it has to do with
Scripture.

II. It is admitted by all, Trinitarian and Unitarian alike, that a
belief in ONE GOD is the first principle of a pure religion. The
slightest departure from this truth involves polytheism and idolatry.
One Creator, one Father, one object for our worship and our love, is the
plain and broad distinction between an idolatrous religion, and the
Supreme Veneration of that spiritual God who claims an undivided empire
throughout the vastness of creation. A perception of this truth does not
require an advanced state of Society or Mind: nor can it be proved that
even in the thickness of pagan darkness it was ever doubted. Heathen
Philosophy, though it might associate with the One Spirit, too pure and
immoveably serene to come in contact with matter, subordinate agents of
creation (which does not differ much from the Trinitarian
conception[510]), yet could read the glory of one Mind upon the outward
universe, and see one Intelligence, one Power, one Will of love diffused
through Nature: Judaism had this idea for its soul: and the Gospel has
republished it in such distinct and resplendent light, that it is the
universal faith of Christendom. So overpowering is the evidence, so
clear is Nature’s testimony to the existence of one God, so
conspicuously has Revelation set it forth in the centre of her
splendours, that Trinitarianism, with what consistency we shall
presently inquire, claims to be received as a believer in the Unity of
Deity. It is a most triumphant acknowledgment of the brightness with
which the great truth, that _God is One_, shines out from his Works[511]
and from his Word, that even the Trinitarian perceives the necessity of
reconciling his views with this fundamental principle; and rather than
depart from it, he prefers to maintain that three may be one, and one
may be three;—though the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, have
each separately all that constitute an infinite and all-perfect God, and
have distinct offices, and appear in distinct, if not directly opposed
characters, yet that there may be a mysterious unity in the essence of a
tri-personal Deity.

I am relieved then from the necessity of proving that God is One. It is
a truth which no one explicitly denies; which the Trinitarian professes
to hold as firmly as the Unitarian; and therefore as the undisputed
doctrine of the Bible we take it as the admitted groundwork of our
argument. We might call upon Nature to multiply proofs of the Unity of
the designing Mind, which the universe reveals; we might appeal to the
regularity of her silent movements and to the sublime order that reigns
throughout her gliding worlds, to attest the Oneness of that
Intelligence whose volitions she obeys: we might ask Philosophy whether
ONE INFINITE CAUSE was not _sufficient_ for the finite or infinite
wonders of creation; whether in all her discoveries she has ever
perceived a single evidence of a divided government; and whether eternal
Laws holding immutable dominion throughout all worlds that Science has
explored, are not sublimest proofs of the fidelity of the one presiding
SPIRIT who trifles not with the feeble intellect of man, but reveals
himself consistently to the seeking minds of His children: we might go
to our own _hearts_, and feel the pressure of one divine hand upon its
tumultuous affections, and ask whether in our sorrows or our joys, our
wants or our aspirations, we resorted to more than one God, or needed
other shelter than that of one all-sufficing Father and Friend; and,
finally, we might open the volume of Revelation, and read to you the
testimony of Prophets from Moses to Christ, that the Lord our God is one
Lord, and there is none other but He:—but it appears it would be a
needless task to prove a doctrine which no one doubts, or to treat as a
question of controversy the universal faith of the Christian world.

We stand at once then upon the undisputed truth of the _Oneness_ of
Deity, and taking this as our uncontested vantage ground, we proceed to
inquire how much is involved in the admission. What are we to understand
by this sublime and unquestioned, and apparently simple truth, that God
is One? There are two answers to this question, and the statement of
each of them will introduce us to the Controversy. The _Unitarian_
answers, that the words are human words, and of course used in a human
sense; that the revelation was to man, and that no caution was given to
him that he was not to attach human ideas to the language in which it is
conveyed; that God is too tender and too faithful to sport with the
understandings of His children, to involve their frail intelligence in
inextricable perplexities; and that, therefore, when He publishes to the
World, _without explanation_, the Unity of his own nature, he intends
men to affix to the words the ideas always associated with them; he does
not use language to mislead, but asserts the simplest and most
intelligible of truths, that God is one Mind, one Person, one undivided
and indivisible Spirit, to whom alone belong underived existence, and
infinite perfections, and unshared dominion. These are the only ideas
our minds ordinarily attach to such language,—this is the only
experience we have of Unity; and if the words, when applied to God, bear
a different meaning, and so have a tendency to deceive us, some caution,
we think, would have been given by a God who was delivering a
_Revelation_ to his Children. The Unitarian believes that a revelation
from God is a revelation of _light_; and without any temptation to
pervert the meaning of words, he receives, in the simple and ordinary
import of the language, the plain and reiterated announcement that “God
is one.” If God used human words, he surely used them for the purpose of
conveying ideas to human minds; for language is not necessary to Him,
much less would human language be the vehicle of His infinite thought.
If, then, He used the words in a sense not human, and therefore unknown
to us, instead of instructing, it would betray and mislead.

The _Trinitarian_ answers, that though he believes in the Unity of God,
yet that Unity is totally different from the unity of all other beings.
He believes that in the One God there are _three_ distinct and infinite
persons, presenting themselves to human contemplation in different
characters, and as the objects of different affections; the first
reigning in Heaven, the second in intimate and inseparable connection
with a dying man upon the Earth; the first immutable in his immensity,
the other _coming_ down from his eternal throne to wrap his infinite
essence in a covering of human flesh; the Father sending the Son, and
the Son satisfying the demands of the Father; the Father the cause and
origin of all things, but holding himself loftily apart, whilst the Holy
Spirit takes the office of communion with men, and becomes the
Comforter, Teacher, and spiritual Friend of the human souls, whom the
Father’s creative energies, acting through the Son, have called into
existence. This, then, is the doctrine of the Trinity: three equal
Persons, each Supreme, each a perfect and infinite Deity, and yet so
united as to constitute but one undivided God.

We are tauntingly told of the vague statements of Unitarian Doctrine.
Now nothing can be more unjust than this, or farther from the facts.
“Controversially described,” Unitarianism is the most definite thing
imaginable. It simply says, _No_, to every one of the allegations of
Trinitarianism. There are, at the very least, five different forms in
which the doctrine of the Trinity has been explained and defended; and
to every one of these five shifting modifications, we repeat our
definite _negative_. There is the widest difference among Trinitarian
Theologians as to their method of stating and explaining the influence
of Atonement and of Original Sin; and to every one of these varieties we
equally repeat our simple negative. Where, then, is the superior
definiteness of Trinitarian statements? We affirm, of all its
characteristic doctrines, that they are untenable in _any form
whatever_. This, surely, is definite enough.

I am not aware that I have stated the doctrine of the Trinity in a way
which any Trinitarian could disown; and the first observation I make
upon it is this, that in this view of the oneness of God, in connecting
the deity of the Father, and the deity of the Son, and the deity of the
Holy Spirit, with a strict _unity_ in the godhead, the Trinitarian has
at least departed from the ordinary acceptation of language. We will not
assert the absolute impossibility of his retaining a belief in the Unity
of God, because we have no right to question his own solemn assertion of
the fact, or to set limits to the powers of another’s faith; but he will
not deny that he believes God to be one, in a sense totally different
from that in which he believes himself to be one; that it is a unity of
three minds, each a perfect God, and capable of acting separately,—in so
much that it is a warning of the Creeds,—not to confound the Persons. It
is not a unity of Mind, nor a unity of Will, nor a unity of Agency, nor
a unity of Person, which the Trinitarian regards as constituting the
Unity of God, but _three_ Minds, _three_ Wills, _three_ Agents, _three_
Persons, mysteriously making one Deity. I ask, were it not for the
overpowering brightness with which the Bible reveals the doctrine of one
God, would the Trinitarian encumber himself with the difficulty of
combining it with his other views; would he not rather simply confess
that three persons made three beings, and not one being; and represent
the world as under the threefold, but harmonious, government of a
Creator, a Saviour, and a sanctifying Spirit?

We have thus, then, two admissions on the part of the Trinitarian, which
I ask you distinctly to bear in mind. He admits the Unity of God; and he
admits that when he attempts to combine that Unity with a Trinity, he
uses the word in an unintelligible sense, and understands, or rather
_marks_, by it something entirely different from the oneness of any
other being,—a oneness in short of which he himself is capable of
forming no conception. That is, he retains the form of _words_ that God
is one; but these words convey to him no distinct idea,—and yet words
are the signs of human ideas;—he confesses that God is not one in any
sense of that word that he can comprehend; and that, therefore, when he
professes his faith in the Unity of God, he is using language which is
unintelligible even to himself. This he must acknowledge, for he calls
the Trinity a mystery; but the mystery he will admit is in the Unity,
not in the Trinity: the mystery (that is, the no-meaningness to man, for
this is the only meaning the word will here bear, the difficulty being
not in the vastness or spirituality of the Conceptions, but in their
irreconcilableness,) is not that there are three Persons, but that the
three are _one_. Now this is the confession of every Trinitarian: he can
form very distinct notions of the Trinity, but he admits that he cannot
reconcile these notions with any human idea of unity; it is
unintelligible, it is inconceivable, it is an apparent contradiction to
all other men, to him only a paradox; it is an unfathomable mystery (a
sad desecration of that solemn word); but still he professes to believe
it,—he maintains that he can hold “the form of sound words;” and as to
_thoughts_, it is his duty to have none upon the subject. He _knows_
that it is revealed that God is One; and he _thinks_ it is revealed that
God is in Three; and without any attempt to harmonize these two
statements, he professes to believe them both.

Now taking our stand on the conceded truth that God is _revealed_ to be
one, we ask for equal evidence that He is revealed to be Three Persons.
We ask throughout the Bible for one plain assertion of this doctrine. We
shall be satisfied with even one, and we think it is not asking much. We
ask but for a single text in which it is declared that there are three
infinite Minds in the Unity of but one infinite God.

It is admitted that there is no distinct statement of this doctrine in
any part of the Scriptures; and here again we rest upon another
confession of all instructed Trinitarians,[512] that this mystery is
nowhere found in express terms; that if taught at all it is taught by
implication; that it is no part of the direct revelation, but merely an
inference which may be collected from certain appearances, certain
verbal phenomena. Now I ask if this doctrine was intended to be
revealed, _could it have been so left_? If the Trinity is as strictly
true as the Unity, could the one have had the witness of Prophets and
Apostles, and shine forth as the clearest light on the revealed page,
whilst the other was left to be gathered from some obscure and
incidental intimations which the most gifted minds have not been able to
perceive? Is it credible that if the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, were three Persons in one God, there should be _nowhere in the
Bible a single_ _statement of that truth_;[513] and ought not this
extraordinary fact make us very cautious to try the soundness of the
_inferences, human and erring modes of reasoning_, upon which, as upon
its foundation, this stupendous doctrine is laid?

There are two passages in the Bible, and only two, in which God, and
Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are mentioned together. It is recorded
in St. Matthew’s Gospel as the last words of the risen Jesus, that he
ascended to his Father, leaving to the world the legacy of his truth—“Go
ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name (properly
into the name) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost”—baptizing them into a belief of God, and of Christ, and of the
power and comfort of the Holy Spirit accompanying the truth, and
witnessing to it in the hearts of all who receive it purely.[514] The
Apostle declares of the Jews that they were baptized into Moses, and the
Evangelist declares of Christians that they were baptized into Christ,
(see also Rom. vi. 3; Gal. iii. 27,) and the plain meaning of such
language is that they were baptized into the Truth which God had
revealed through Moses and through Christ. What support then is there
here for the doctrine of a Trinity? Is this indeed the strongest
scriptural evidence that Trinitarianism can boast of—that because three
distinctions follow one another—God, and his Prophet, and his Spirit
witnessing to his truth in the hearts and before the eyes of His
children—therefore the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God in communication
with man, must be a person, distinct from God, because the other two
words express persons—and therefore these three are co-equal and are
one. Such is the Interpretation that produces Trinitarianism. Is there a
single hint in this passage of three persons in one God? What can be
made out of it more than the Saviour’s last injunction to his followers,
to carry through the world that glorious and sanctifying truth, which
the one God manifested through his well-beloved Son, and accompanied
with the energy of his spirit. The Holy Spirit is a Scripture expression
for _God in communication with man_, naturally or supernaturally.

The _only other_ passage in which Jesus Christ, and God, and the Holy
Spirit, are mentioned in the same sentence, must receive a precisely
similar explanation. St. Paul concludes the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians in these words—“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the
love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.” Now
what is this but a beautiful and affectionate prayer that the
Corinthians might be partakers of the grace of God that was in Jesus
Christ, of the love of their Heavenly Father, and of the gifts and
influences of his holy spirit? Indeed this passage, like all others
brought to prove the Trinity, is of itself quite sufficient to overthrow
that doctrine. The name God in it, is not applied to Jesus Christ nor to
the holy spirit: and to prove that holy spirit does not mean a person,
but the spiritual energies of God in communication with man, the word
_communion_ is used:—a participation or communion of _a person_ is
without meaning—a communion in holy and heavenly influences is beautiful
and everlasting truth. Such are the only pretences that Trinitarianism
puts forth, that it is openly taught in Scripture! We ask for no other
passages scripturally to disprove the doctrine.

Let us now attend to that _inferential_ reasoning by which it is
attempted to be proved that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are united
with the Father, to form three persons in one God. There are some texts
in which divine attributes are supposed to be ascribed to Jesus, and the
same mode of reasoning being applied to the Holy Spirit, _it is
inferred_ that Christ is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God—and that
to preserve the consistency of Scripture, it is necessary to maintain
both that God is One, and that God is Three. Now I ask, does not this
look like a seeking of evidence for the doctrine _after_ Ecclesiastical
History had introduced it, under the influences and motives already
described, rather than like the natural way in which such a doctrine
would break from Revelation itself upon the notice of the world? Had not
the doctrine its true origin in human and worldly influences, and then
was not an origin sought for it in the Orientalisms of Scripture
language? This then is the method of _reasoning_ by which this doctrine,
so vast, so awful, if it be true, is attempted to be proved; and upon
the soundness of this _inferential_ process does Trinitarianism depend.
So that Orthodoxy after all its sneers against the pride of Human
Reason, depends for its own life upon the correctness of human
reasonings,—and then erects the results of this _process of fallible
reasoning_ into the Essentials of Salvation.

There are several passages in which Christ is supposed to be called God,
though there is not, I think, one clear instance of such an application
of the word; and even if there was, we have Christ’s own interpretation
of the only sense in which such language could be applied to him. “Jesus
answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods? if he
called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture
cannot be broken; say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent
into the world, ‘Thou blasphemest;’ because I said I am the Son of
God?”[515]

There are only two passages in the whole gospels, in which the title has
ever been supposed to be given to Christ, and these both occurring in
the same gospel, so that three of the gospels never were even supposed
to have a trace of such language. One of these passages in the Proem of
St. John’s Gospel has already been explained in the course of the
present Controversy, and the other is the expression of Thomas, who, the
moment before he made the exclamation, knew so little of Christ and of
Christianity that he would not believe that Jesus was risen from the
dead. It is from the lips of the unbeliever of one moment, and the
inspired of the next, that we are to receive the high mystery of the
Trinity. But in truth the exclamation of Thomas will not bear to be
sobered down into a revelation of doctrines—“My Lord, and my God!” The
first of these clauses was an exclamation of surprise, a sudden and
passionate recognition of Jesus; the second was the natural and
immediate transference (common in cases of supernatural impression, with
all minds, pious or profane,) of the thoughts of Thomas to that awful
and wonder-working God, whose power and presence were so visibly
manifested in the resurrection of his Christ. There is no evidence, in
the remainder of the gospel, or in the book of the Acts, or throughout
the New Testament, that Thomas, or the rest of the Apostles, for a
moment believed that Jesus was God. Now, since this was a doctrine that
they certainly had no conception of, previous to the death of Christ,
there must have been an occasion, when, if true, it broke for _the first
time_ on the astonished minds of the disciples. Now is it possible to
believe that such an occasion could have passed _unmarked_—that no
amazement, no awe would _be expressed_—and that as we follow them in
their course, we should be unable to distinguish between the moments
when they did not, and the moments when they did understand, that the
being with whom they had been living in familiar intercourse was the
everlasting God? Could such a discovery burst upon any human mind, and
that mind manifest no emotion—not a ripple on the current of sentiment
and feeling to show when it was that these disciples first began to know
that they had been the familiar friends of the living God? I confidently
state that the thing is not credible nor possible. The disciples would
not have been human, if such things could be. We know that after the
ascension, as before, they always speak of him as “the _man_ approved by
God, by signs and miracles which God did by him, and whom God raised
from the dead?” Do such things admit of explanation from the known
course of human sentiments and emotions, if Trinitarianism is true? We
think not.

There is another passage in the Gospels supposed to teach the deity of
Christ—and hence so far used as an inferential proof of the doctrine of
the Trinity:—“I and my Father are one.” Beautiful expression of the soul
of Christ, excelled in beauty only by that life which yet more
spiritually declared that He and his Father were one, for “what the Son
seeth the Father do, these also doeth the Son likewise!” Why are we
compelled to examine coldly, or turn an instant from the deep religious
meaning of this perfect filial utterance of the Son of God? It expresses
that harmony of purpose with God which is the result and peace of the
spirit of true religion, and which was perfect in the mind of Jesus,
because in him was perfect the spirit of faith in Providence, of
trustful submission to his Father’s will. “The cup that my Father hath
given me, shall I not drink of it?” Well might _he_ say, and yet how
wondrous it is that any being could say, and yet retain his intense
humanity, “I and my Father are one!” Clear proof of the inspiration of
the Christ! But how the beauty fades away if this very being was God
himself, and all his submission of will is but an artifice of words! How
hard, artificial, and unlovely, does the ever fresh gospel become when
submitted to the tortures of systems, and system-makers! What a
difference in genuine spiritual power on the heart of man between Jesus
living and dying in the peace of _faith_, in the trust that a holy God
will keep the destinies of a holy mind, that his Providence will
recompense the Right—and Jesus not living and dying in the strength of
the _moral_ elements of faith, but actually associated with the
omniscient mind of God, so as to be an inseparable person! Such should
be the difference between the genuine spiritual energy of Unitarian and
Trinitarian representations of Christianity.

Jesus, in the context, explains in what sense he uses this beautiful
expression, “I and my Father are one,” and he there positively denies
that the employment of it implies any claim of equality with God. Let
our Lord be his own interpreter, and let the solemn and affecting words
I am about to quote, silence for ever the vain plea, that this exquisite
expression of the moral sentiment and spirit of Jesus, was intended to
be doctrinal and Trinitarian. If so, there is equal proof for all
Christians being portions of the Godhead. “Neither pray I for these
alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
that they all may be one; as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that
they also may be one in us:—and the glory which thou gavest me I have
given them; _that they may be one, even as we are one_; I in them, and
thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may
know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved
me.”[516]

The only other passage of any force in which deity is supposed to be
accorded to Jesus,[517] I do not notice here, because it has already
been abundantly examined in the present Controversy.

I would now call your attention to the precise state of the argument so
far as we have advanced in it. We have taken for granted the Unity of
God, which no Christian denies. We have found that the belief of three
persons in one God is not reconcilable with any _human_ conception of
that admitted unity: we have found that there was no _direct_ evidence
in the Bible for the doctrine of the Trinity: and lastly, we have
examined some of the very strongest passages of Scripture, on which that
doctrine is attempted to be established, _through an inferential mode of
reasoning_.

I might stop here then, and without looking at the Scripture evidence
against the doctrine, but only the evidence in its favour, declare that
such a doctrine could not possibly have such an insufficient
publication. The very passages brought forward to sustain it, disprove
it. They all speak of derived powers, and of glory communicated. They
are all in the strain,—“Therefore God, even _his_ God, hath highly
exalted him, and _given_ him a name that is above every name.” Nay, take
that passage, than which there is none in which dominion is more
emphatically ascribed to Christ, and see how it closes:—“and when all
things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be
subject unto him that did put all things under him, that God may be all
in all.”—1 Cor. xv. 28. We shall not, however, treat Trinitarianism so
lightly as to dismiss it, unproved upon its own showing; we shall not
rest satisfied with pointing out the insufficiency of its Scriptural
authority, but bring against it the overpowering force of opposing
Scripture; and as we have given specimens of the biblical evidence for,
advance something of the biblical evidence against, the Trinity.

In the first place, then, this doctrine cannot be true, because there
are some passages in which _it is expressly and plainly_ declared that
the Father alone is the one God, not the Father, _and_ the Son, _and_
the Spirit, but the FATHER. “Father!—this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast
sent.” “But to us there is but ONE GOD, the FATHER, of whom are all
things, and we in Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all
things, and we by him.”

“There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all,
who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”

“Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are
in Heaven; _neither the Son_, but the Father.”

These declarations are surely sufficient to protect Unitarianism from
having no warrant in Scripture. They contain direct, positive, definite
assertions; they assert that there is one God, and that Jesus Christ is
_not_ that God. It is not possible for human language to express more
clearly or more guardedly the simple faith of Unitarian Christianity.
Yet we are told that only the ingenuity of heretics has obliged
Trinitarians to have recourse to unscriptural language. Strange,
certainly, that Holy Writ should have itself expressed the creeds of
heresy and damnable error, and rendered it impossible to express in its
sacred words the Creeds of Truth!

I quote, in the second place, some passages out of a multitude, in which
ideas are connected with Christ which are utterly inconsistent with the
supposition of his deity. “I came not to do mine own will.” “I can of
myself do nothing.” “If I honour myself, my honour is nothing; it is my
Father that honoureth me.”—John viii. 54. “For as the Father hath life
in himself, so hath he _given_ to the Son to have life in himself.”—John
v. 26. “As the living Father hath sent me, and I _live by the
Father_.”—John vi. 57. “I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who
sent me, He gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should
speak.”—John xii. 49, 50.

“The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent
me.”—John xiv. 24.

“I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your
God.”—John xx. 17.

“When ye have lifted up the Son of man on high, then shall ye know that
I am _he_, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught
me I speak these things”—John viii. 28.

Ecclesiastical History has already acquainted us with the device that
sets aside the plain meaning of these passages. It is said that Jesus
Christ had _two natures_, was composed of two minds, that he was both
man and God; and thus does Trinitarianism openly assert mysteries of an
opposite character. Three Persons in one Essence is unintelligible
enough; but no sooner is this propounded to us, than we are called off
to a directly opposite mystery of two Essences in one Person. And here
we cannot be put off with the metaphysical sophistry that we do not know
the nature of God, for we do know something of the nature of _man_; and
we do say that never was there a greater abuse of the moral meanings of
the word Faith, than to set forth, that God’s nature and man’s nature so
united together as to form one inseparable person, may be embraced as an
object of Faith. The true nature and office of Faith is to carry us from
the seen to the unseen,—to give us moral confidence in that world which
we do not see, from our moral experience in this world which we do
see,—and in that portion of God’s ways which the future conceals, from
what we know of that portion of them which the present unfolds. Faith is
moral, not metaphysical; and, above all, finds no merit and no efficacy
in assenting to unmeaning words.

As before, of the doctrine of the Trinity, so now of this doctrine of
the Hypostatic Union, as it is called, I ask for a single hint
throughout the New Testament of the inconceivable fact that, in the body
of Jesus, resided the mind of God and the mind of man,—two natures, the
one finite, the other infinite, yet making but one person,—a difficulty
you will perceive the very opposite of that of the Trinity; for whereas
it teaches three persons in one nature, this teaches two natures in one
person. But we have already traced, in Ecclesiastical History, the
origin of this view, and the necessity of its appearance, in
subservience to the doctrine of the Trinity.

I will only apply one scriptural test to this theory of the two natures
in Christ. And it is one from which Trinitarians cannot escape by their
ordinary refuge of avoiding one set of statements by referring them to
the humanity of Jesus, and another set of statements by referring them
to his deity. It is God the Son, whom Trinitarians represent as becoming
incarnate in the body of Jesus; it was God the Son who took humanity
into union with deity; therefore whenever Jesus, in his human nature,
speaks of the divinity that dwelt within him, inspired him, and wrought
through him, it must be God the Son to whom he refers. But this is never
the case: Scripture does not know this doctrine, nor support its
requisitions. It is always, “_the Father_ who dwelleth in me, He doeth
the works.”

It was asserted in Christ Church, that if there is not a plurality of
persons in the godhead, the oriental style, “let us make man in our own
image,” and the use of the plural where we use the singular, made the
word of God an agent of deception, and affected the morality of the
divine mind. This is bold language; and, considering the evidence, as
unscholarlike as bold. We refrain from a retort in the same spirit. We
look with unaffected wonder upon the mind that is reckless enough, and
ignorant enough of the sources of error within itself, to dare to say,
“if I am not right in my interpretation of Scripture, God is a
deceiver.” Yet such men can charge others with making themselves judges
of revelation, and saying what God _must_ mean.

I have not taken up that other thread of supposed scriptural
intimations, which is thought to connect the Holy Spirit as a third
Person in the unity of the godhead. This portion of the argument,
strangely neglected by Trinitarians, who generally take for granted the
deity and personality of the Holy Ghost as following without debate from
the deity of Christ, since three not two is the favourite mythological
and theological number, is however to form the subject of a separate
Lecture in Christ Church, not yet delivered. Why there should be any
necessity, on Trinitarian principles of theology, for a third person in
the Godhead to perform “_the work_,” as it is called, of the spirit of
God in communication with man, after the sacrifice of Christ had left
the Father’s love free to operate, we cannot perceive, except upon the
Platonic principle, that the Supreme One in the Trinity is an Essence
perfectly abstracted, immoveable, and without action. Not wishing,
however, to anticipate the argument, I shall only adduce one remarkable
passage, in proof that the Holy Spirit could not, in the first age of
the Gospel, have a deity and personality ascribed to it distinct from
the deity and personality of God the Father. When Paul came to Ephesus,
he found there some disciples, of whom he inquired,—“Have you received
the Holy Ghost since you believed?” The answer is remarkable: “We have
not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” Now is it
possible that the Holy Ghost should be the third person of the Trinity,
a constituent person in the Christian God, and that these “believers,”
though only disciples of John, should have been uninstructed in the
doctrine? The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, God himself in
communication with man, naturally or supernaturally, the enlightening
influence of the Spiritual Father revealing Himself to the spiritual
nature of His children.

I do not know what may appear convincing to other minds, but to me the
Ecclesiastical History of the doctrine of the Trinity, with its rise in
_human_ sources of Philosophy and Motive, and not in Revelation, seems a
fact capable of being most clearly traced. Rarely indeed does the origin
of an error so conspicuously disclose itself: rarely is its course so
open to observation. On the other hand, if there is not decisive proof
in Scripture of the strict and personal Unity of God, I must think that
it is vain to prove any doctrine from the words of the Bible—for sure I
am that there is no doctrine more distinctly, more guardedly, more
simply, more repeatedly stated, than the great doctrine, that there is
One God, and that the FATHER is that God.

We are told that the “invisible things of God are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and
godhead.” Yet the Universe reveals no Trinity. Reason knows and requires
no Trinity. Natural Religion is not Trinitarian. Scripture speaks of One
God the Father, and of One Lord Jesus Christ. Gentile Philosophy and
Ecclesiastical History _are_ Trinitarian. In _their_ pages we find this
subject. Ecclesiastical History has narrated the rise and progress of
these doctrines—and to Ecclesiastical History shall they finally be
referred,—when another chapter is added, a chapter that unhappily yet
remains to be written, the history of their decline and fall.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture VII.

Footnote 453:

Locke.

Footnote 454:

Mr. James’s Lecture, p. 410.

Footnote 455:

Spoken, not printed.

Footnote 456:

Milman’s Edition, vol. iii. p. 311.

Footnote 457:

“That this Trinity (Monad or Good, Wisdom, Spirit or Energy) was not
first of all a mere invention of Plato’s, but much ancienter than him,
is plainly affirmed by Plotinus in these words,—‘That these doctrines
are not new nor of yesterday, but have been very anciently delivered,
though obscurely (the discourses now extant being but Explications of
them) appears from PLATO’S own writings; PARMENIDES before having
insisted on them.’” _Cudworth. Intel. Syst._ p. 546.—See also Bishop
Berkeley’s Siris, sections 341-365.

Footnote 458:

“The principle of every thing is more simple than the thing itself.
Wherefore the sensible world was made from Intellect, or the
intelligible; and before this must there needs be something more
simple still. For many did not proceed from many, but this multiform
thing Intellect proceeded from that which is not multiform but simple;
as Number from Unity. If that which understands be many, or contain
multitude in it, then that which contains no multitude, does not
properly understand; and this is the first thing;—to understand is not
the First; neither in Essence nor in Dignity; but the Second; a thing
in order of nature, after the First Good, and springing up from
thence, as that which is moved with desire towards it.”—_Plotinus.
Cudworth_, p. 584.

Footnote 459:

“The FIRST is above all manner of action: neither is it fit to
attribute the architecture of the world to the First God, but rather
to account him the Father of that God, _who is the Artificer_. The
SECOND, to whom the energy of Intellection is attributed, is therefore
properly called the Demiurgus, as the contriving Architect, in whom
the Archetypal World is contained, and the First Pattern, or Paradigm
of the Whole Universe. The THIRD is that which moveth about Mind or
Intellect, the Light or Effulgency thereof, and its Print or
Signature, which always dependeth upon it, and acteth according to it.
This is that which reduces both the Fecundity of the First Simple
Good, and the Architectonick Contrivance of the Second into Act and
Energy. This is the Immediate and as it were _Manuary Opificer_ of the
whole world, that which actually Governs, Rules, and Presideth over
all.”—_Plotinus. ap. Cudw._ p. 583.

Footnote 460:

“Since the introduction of the Greek or Chaldean Philosophy, the Jews
were persuaded of the pre-existence, transmigration, and immortality
of souls; and Providence was justified by a supposition, that they
were confined in their earthly prisons to expiate the stains which
they had contracted in a former state. But the degrees of purity and
corruption are almost immeasurable. It might be fairly presumed that
the most sublime and virtuous of human spirits was infused into the
offspring of Mary and the Holy Ghost; that his abasement was the
result of his voluntary choice; and that the object of his mission was
to purify, not his own, but the sins of the world. On his return to
his native skies he received the immense reward of his obedience; the
everlasting kingdom of the Messiah, which had been darkly foretold by
the prophets, under the carnal images of peace, of conquest, and of
dominion. Omnipotence could enlarge the human faculties of Christ to
the extent of his celestial office. In the language of antiquity, the
title of God has not been severely confined to the first parent; and
his incomparable minister, his only begotten son, might claim, without
presumption, the religious, though secondary worship of a subject
world.

“The seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen in the rocky and
ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in full maturity, to the
happier climes of the Gentiles; and the strangers of Rome or Asia, who
never beheld the manhood, were the more readily disposed to embrace
the divinity of Christ. The polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek
and the Barbarian, were alike accustomed to conceive a long
succession, an infinite chain of angels or dæmons, or deities, or
æons, or emanations, issuing from the throne of light. Nor could it
seem strange or incredible, that the first of these æons, the _Logos_,
or word of God, of the same substance with the Father, should descend
upon earth, to deliver the human race from vice and error, and to
conduct them in the path of life and immortality.”—_Gibbon_, vol.
viii. p. 271.

Footnote 461:

Philo de Abrahamo. Le Clerc’s Supplement to Hammond, p. 168.

Footnote 462:

Cudworth, p. 590.

Footnote 463:

“It was in this mode of apprehending the Divine Being that the
doctrine of the Trinity had its origin. The Logos of the first four
centuries was in the view of the Fathers both an attribute or
attributes of God, and a proper person. Their philosophy was, in
general, that of the later Platonists, and they transferred from it
into Christianity this mode of Conception. In treating of this fact,
so strange, and one which will be so new to many of my readers, I will
first quote a passage from Origen, the coincidence of which with the
conceptions of Philo and the later Platonists is apparent. ‘Nor must
we omit, that Christ is properly the Wisdom of God; and is therefore
so denominated. For the wisdom of the God and Father of All has not
its being in bare conceptions, analogous to the conceptions in human
minds. But if any one be capable of forming an idea of _an incorporeal
being of diverse forms of thought, which comprehend the_ LOGOI [the
archetypal forms] _of all things, a being indued with life, and having
as it were a soul_, he will know that the Wisdom of God, who is above
every creature, pronounced rightly concerning herself; The Lord
created me, the beginning, his way to his works.’”—_Origen, Opp._ iv.
39, 40,—quoted by Norton on the Trinity, p. 271-2.

Footnote 464:

Milman’s Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 313.

Footnote 465:

See Cudworth, p. 603, 4.

Footnote 466:

“The creed which was first adopted, and that perhaps in the very
earliest age, by the Church of Rome, was that which is now called the
Apostles’ Creed, and it was the general opinion, from the fourth
century downwards, that it was actually the production of those
blessed persons assembled for that purpose. Our evidence is not
sufficient to establish that fact, and some writers very confidently
reject it. But there is reasonable ground for our assurance that the
form of faith which we still repeat and inculcate was in use and
honour in the very early propagation of our religion.”—_Waddington’s
History of the Church_, p. 27.

Footnote 467:

“Ignatius, Justin, and Irenæus make no mention of it, but they
occasionally repeat _some words_ contained in it, which is _held_ as
_proof_ that they knew it by heart.”—_Waddington._

Footnote 468:

Jortin, Eccles. Hist. vol. ii. p. 180.

Footnote 469:

Comment. in Johan. vol. ii. p. 5.

Footnote 470:

Hist. lib. iii. c. 24.

Footnote 471:

Chrys. Op. vol. vi. p. 171; viii. p. 2.

Footnote 472:

Comm. in Matt. sec. 161.

Footnote 473:

In Celsum. lib. ii. p. 56.

Footnote 474:

Professor Burton gives some instances of the use of the word God by
Ignatius, A. D. 107, in connection with Christ. Nothing can be more
slender and insufficient than his other evidences of the recognition
of these doctrines by the Apostolical Fathers.

Footnote 475:

Dial. cum Tryph. p. 252.

Footnote 476:

Lib. i. cap. 19; ii. cap. 3.

Footnote 477:

Strom. lib. vi. p. 644. Priestley’s Hist. Early Opinions.

Footnote 478:

Advers. Prax. c. 13.

Footnote 479:

Comment. vol. ii. p. 47.

Footnote 480:

Cap. ii. p. 84.

Footnote 481:

Lib. iv. sec. 14.

Footnote 482:

Orat. iii. con. Arian.

Footnote 483:

Cudworth. Intel. Sys. p. 599.

Footnote 484:

Inattention to this distinction vitiates the whole reasonings of Dr.
Burton’s learned work on the Anti-Nicene Fathers. There is no doubt
that the deity of the Son and even of the Holy Ghost is spoken of
before the Council of Nice, but always in the Platonic or derived
sense, never in the present orthodox sense of _co-equal_ and
_independent_. The word con-substantial proves nothing to the
contrary, for a Platonist would not have objected to the application
of the word to the second and third persons in his Trinity, as
partaking of, or derived from the Essence of the one Supreme. See
Cudworth’s argument to this effect (Intel. Sys. p. 597), who contends
that by _co-essential and consubstantial_, the Nicene Council meant
nothing more than that the Son was _generically_ God, of the same
nature, but _numerically_ different, having his own distinct Essence.
See also Dr. Burton on a passage similar to one from Tertullian
already quoted, where he is misled by not attending to this
distinction.—_Theol. Works_, vol. ii. p. 89.

Footnote 485:

Cudworth. Intell. Sys. p. 595.

Footnote 486:

“It had been the vice of the Christians of the third century, to
involve themselves, ‘in certain metaphysical questions which if
considered in one light, are too sublime to become the subject of
human wit; if in another too trifling to gain the attention of
reasonable men.’ (Warburton.) The rage for such disputations had been
communicated to religion by the contagion of philosophy; but the
manner in which it operated on the one and on the other was
essentially different. With the philosopher such questions were
objects of the understanding only, subjects of comparatively
dispassionate speculation, whereon the versatile ingenuity of a minute
mind might employ or waste itself. But with the Christian they were
matters of truth or falsehood, of belief or disbelief. Hence arose an
intense anxiety respecting the result, and thus the passions were
awakened, and presently broke loose and proceeded to every excess.
From the moment that the solution of these questions was attempted by
any other method than the fair interpretation of the words of
Scripture; as soon as the copious language of Greece was eagerly
applied to the definition of spiritual things, and the explanation of
heavenly mysteries, the field of contention seemed to be removed from
earth to air—where the foot found nothing stable to rest upon; where
arguments were easily eluded, and where the space to fly and to rally
was infinite; so that the contest grew more noisy as it was less
decisive, and more angry as it became more prolonged and complicated.
Add to this the nature and genius of the disputants: for the origin of
these disputes may be traced without any exception to the restless
imaginations of the East.” * * *

“We must also mention the loose and unsettled principles of that age,
which had prevailed before the appearance of Christianity, and had
been to a certain extent adopted by its professors—_those, for
instance, which justified the means by the end, and admitted fraud and
forgery into the service of religion_.”—_Waddington, Church Hist._ p.
89.

Footnote 487:

ὑπὲρ μικρῶν καὶ λίαν ἐλαχίστων.

Footnote 488:

“Let us imagine, then, a council called by a Christian Emperor, by a
Constantine, a Constantius, a Theodosius, a Justinian, and three, or
four, or five hundred prelates, assembled from all quarters, to decide
a theological debate.”

“Let us consider a little by what various motives these various men
may be influenced, as by reverence to the emperor, or to his
councillors and favourites, his slaves and eunuchs; by fear of
offending some great prelate, as a Bishop of Rome or of Alexandria,
who had it in his power to insult, vex, and plague all the bishops
within and without his jurisdiction; by the dread of passing for
heretics, and of being calumniated, reviled, hated, anathematized,
excommunicated, imprisoned, banished, fined, beggared, starved, if
they refused to submit; by compliance with some active, leading, and
imperious spirits, by a deference to a majority, by a love dictating
and domineering, of applause and respect, by vanity and ambition, by a
total ignorance of the question in debate, or a total indifference
about it, by private friendships, by enmity and resentment, by old
prejudices, by hopes of gain, by an indolent disposition, by good
nature, by the fatigue of attending, and a desire to be at home, by
the love of peace and quiet, and a hatred of contention, &c.

“Whosoever takes these things into due consideration, will not be
disposed to pay a blind deference to the authority of general
Councils, and will rather be inclined to judge that ‘the Council held
by the Apostles was the first and the last in which the Holy Spirit
may be affirmed to have presided.’

“Thus far we may safely go, and submit to an Apostolical Synod; but if
once we proceed one step beyond this, we go we know not whither. If we
admit the infallibility of one General Council, why not of another?
And where shall we stop? At the first Nicene Council, A. D. 325, or at
the second Nicene Council, A. D. 787? They who disclaim private
judgment, and believe the infallibility of the Church, act
consistently in holding the infallibility of Councils; but they who
take their faith from the Scriptures, and not from the Church, should
be careful not to require nor to yield too much regard to such
assemblies, how numerous soever. Numbers, in this case, go for little,
and to them the old Proverb may be applied;—

‘Est turba _semper_ argumentum pessimi.’

“If such Councils make righteous decrees, it must have been by strange
good luck.”—_Jortin, Eccles. Hist._ vol. ii. p. 183-4.

Footnote 489:

Milman’s Ed. vol. iii. p. 331.

Footnote 490:

Waddington, Church Hist. p. 93.

Footnote 491:

Eccles. Hist. vol. ii. p. 210.

Footnote 492:

“The Christian Religion, which in itself is plain and simple, _he_
(Constantius) confounded by the dotage of superstition. Instead of
reconciling the parties by the weight of his authority, he cherished
and propagated, by verbal disputes, the differences which his vain
curiosity had excited. The highways were covered with troops of
bishops, galloping from every side to the Assemblies, which they call
synods; and while they laboured to reduce the whole sect to their own
particular opinions, the public establishment of the posts was almost
ruined by their hasty and repeated journeys.”—_Ammianus, as quoted by
Gibbon_, vol. iii. p. 347.

Footnote 493:

“Constantine’s conduct was variable afterwards, _for he certainly
understood not_ this perplexed and obscure controversy, and he
acted as he was influenced at different times by the ecclesiastics
of each party, who accused one another, not only of heterodoxy,
but of being enemies to the Emperor, and of other faults and
misdemeanors.”—_Jortin._

Footnote 494:

“Notwithstanding all which it must be granted, that though this
co-essentiality of the three persons in the Trinity does imply them to
be all God, yet does it not follow from thence of necessity that they
are therefore _One God_.”—_Cudworth_, p. 596.

Footnote 495:

“That little is said concerning the separate divinity of the Spirit of
God in the Scripture is evident to every body; but the reason that
Epiphanius gives for it, will not be easily imagined. In order to
account for the Apostles saying so little concerning the divinity of
the Holy Spirit, and omitting the mention of him after that of the
Father and the Son, (as when Paul says, ‘there is one God and Father
of all, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are
all things,’) he says that ‘the Apostles writing by the inspiration of
the Spirit, He did not choose to introduce much commendation of
Himself, lest it should give us an example of commending
ourselves.’”—_Priestley’s History of the Corruptions of Christianity_,
p. 60.

Footnote 496:

“The Holy Spirit, if he be God, as the objection is stated by Basil,
must either be begotten or unbegotten. If he be unbegotten, he is the
Father; if begotten, the Son; and if he is neither begotten nor
unbegotten, he is a creature.”—_Priestley’s Hist. Early Opinions_,
vol. ii. 331.

This is the least offensive specimen I could find of the common
objections made to the separate deity of the Holy Ghost at the time
the doctrine was first proposed. The plainer and coarser forms of the
objection, unhesitatingly handled by the Fathers, I withhold from
reverence. But let the reader consult the Ecclesiastical History of
the Period. The difficulty stated by Athanasius, Basil, and others,
was overcome by establishing a certain mysterious or rather no-meaning
difference between _begotten_ and _proceeding_. Such is always the
easy refuge of mystics. The line is a faint one between unintelligible
ideas and no ideas at all. “The _nativity_ of the Son,” says Austin,
“differs from the _procession_ of the Spirit, otherwise they would be
brothers.” I doubt whether it is right to disclose to all eyes the
morbid anatomy of Theology; but I assure my readers that I am
reverentially forbearing.

Footnote 497:

“In the age of religious freedom, which was determined by the Council
of Nice, the dignity of Christ was measured by private judgment,
according to the indefinite rule of Scripture, or reason, or
tradition. But when his pure and proper divinity had been established
on the ruins of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics trembled on the
edge of a precipice, where it was impossible to recede, dangerous to
stand, dreadful to fall; and the manifold inconveniences of this creed
were aggravated by the sublime character of their theology. They
hesitated to pronounce; _that_ God himself, the second person of an
equal and consubstantial Trinity, was manifested in the flesh; _that_
a being who pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of
Mary; _that_ his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and
months, and years of human existence; _that_ the Almighty had been
scourged and crucified; _that_ his impassible essence had felt pain
and anguish; _that_ his omniscience was not exempt from ignorance; and
_that_ the source of life and immortality expired on Mount Calvary.
These alarming consequences were affirmed with unblushing simplicity
by Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, and one of the luminaries of the
church. The son of a learned grammarian, he was skilled in all the
sciences of Greece; eloquence, erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous
in the volumes of Apollinaris, were humbly devoted to the service of
religion. The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of
Julian, he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and
though he affected the rigour of geometrical demonstration, his
Commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the
Scriptures. A mystery which had long floated in the looseness of
popular belief, was defined by his perverse diligence in a technical
form; and he first proclaimed the memorable words, “One incarnate
nature of Christ,” which are still re-echoed with hostile clamours in
the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Æthiopia. He taught that the Godhead
was united or mingled with the body of a man; and that the _Logos_,
the eternal wisdom, supplied in the flesh the place and office of a
human soul.”—_Gibbon_, vol. viii. p. 279.

Footnote 498:

Waddington, Hist. of the Church, p. 182.

Footnote 499:

Jortin, vol. iii. p. 116.

Footnote 500:

Norton on the Trinity.

Footnote 501:

“Hence many questions arose, which gave rise to as many controversies.
For example, it was debated, Whether the two natures in Christ were so
united as to become one; or whether they remained distinct? Whether,
since Christ was born, and died, and rose again, it could be said that
_God_ was born and died, and rose again?

“Whether the Virgin Mary, who was the Mother of Christ, could be
called the Mother of _God_?

“Whether Christ were two persons, or only one?

“Whether Christ was everywhere present, in his human, as in his divine
nature?

“Whether one person of the Trinity could be said to suffer for us?

“Whether the whole Trinity could be said to suffer for us?

“Whether in Christ there were three substances, or only two?

“These questions produced altercation and strife, and then
anathematisms, and then fightings and murders.”—_Jortin_, vol. iii. p.
117.

To these might be added the question proposed by the Emperor
Heraclius, A.D. 629, to his Bishops—“Whether Christ, of one person but
two natures, was actuated by a single or a double will?” This gave
rise to what was called the _Monothelite_ (one will) Controversy, as
that respecting the single nature was called the Monophysite (one
nature) Controversy.

Footnote 502:

Jortin, vol. iii. p. 124.

Footnote 503:

Milman’s Edit. vol. viii. p. 312.

Footnote 504:

Norton on the Trinity, p. 78.

Footnote 505:

“Vigilius Tapsensis hath been supposed, by many, to have been the
Maker of the Athanasian Creed about this time (the close of the fifth
century). Others are of a different opinion. But it matters little by
whom, or where, or when it was composed.”—_Jortin, Eccles. Hist._ vol.
iii. p. 131.

Footnote 506:

“The opinions of some of our own Churchmen on this subject are
collected by Clarke in his book on the Trinity. The expression of
Bishop Tomline cannot be too generally known. ‘We know,’ he says,
‘that different persons have deduced different, and even opposite
doctrines from the words of Scripture, and consequently there must be
many errors among Christians; but since the Gospel no where informs us
what degree of error will exclude from eternal happiness, I am ready
to acknowledge that in my judgment, notwithstanding the authority of
former times, our church would have acted more wisely and more
consistently with its general principles of mildness and toleration,
if it had not adopted the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed.
Though I firmly believe that the doctrines themselves of this creed
are all founded in Scripture, I cannot but conceive it both
unnecessary and presumptuous to say, that except every one do keep
them whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly.’”—_Exposition_, part iii. art. viii.

Footnote 507:

Church History, p. 220.

Footnote 508:

Intel. Sys. p. 602, 4.

Footnote 509:

“It must be acknowledged that the first converts from the Platonic
school took advantage of the resemblance between Evangelic and
Platonic doctrine on the subject of the Godhead, to apply the
principles of their old philosophy to the explication and confirmation
of the articles of their faith. They defended it by arguments drawn
from Platonic principles, and even propounded it in Platonic
language.”—_Bishop Horsley._

Footnote 510:

See the Rev. D. James’s acknowledgment of the Subordination of the Son
and the Holy Spirit to the Father—of their _official_ inferiority: and
_the illustrations_ of the King and the Duke of Wellington, which
Trinitarian Theology thinks apposite.

Footnote 511:

We were told, indeed, in Christ Church, by the Rev. D. James, that
there _might_ exist any number of persons in the divine Essence, three
thousand as well as three, and that only because Scripture had
revealed no more had Christians fixed upon that number as making up
the divine Unity. And this is so clear a consequence of the principles
of Trinitarian Theology, that the view must be ascribed _to all
Trinitarians_. Scripture, however, though it has only _revealed_
three, has not declared that there are _no more_ persons in the
Godhead—so that it is being wise above what is written to limit the
divine MONARCHY to the ECONOMY of three Persons.

But farther than this it was declared by the Rev. D. James that nature
contained _no evidence_ of One God, not even in the Trinitarian sense
of Oneness, for that many Gods might unite to build the world, as many
men had united to build the Liverpool Custom House. What would the
Architect of that building say to this invasion of the unity of his
designing mind? Mr. James repeatedly informed his audience that he
always appealed to reason! Such is Trinitarianism when it reasons. But
I suppose this view must be considered as a peculiarity of the
individual preacher.

Footnote 512:

Who are the competent Critics, of whom Mr. Byrth speaks as retaining
the text of the three Heavenly Witnesses? The Bishop of Salisbury, I
suppose. If this had been Unitarian Criticism, Mr. Byrth would have
called it _defective_ Scholarship or dishonesty. He can discriminate
in favour of those who err upon his own side. See a curious statement
of the external evidence affecting this text, 1 John v. 7, in the
second volume of Burton’s Theological Works, p. 114, 2nd part.

Footnote 513:

“It is reasonable to expect, that those doctrines, which form the
leading articles of any system, _should be plainly stated in the book_
which professes to make that system known.”—_Wardlaw._

Footnote 514:

“‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’ That is, ‘Go ye
therefore into all the world, and teach or disciple all nations,
baptizing them into the profession of faith in, and an obligation to
obey the doctrine taught by Christ, with authority from God the
Father, and confirmed by the Holy Ghost.’”—_Lardner._

Footnote 515:

John x. 34.

Footnote 516:

John xvii. 20, 23.

Footnote 517:

Rom. ix. 5.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE VIII.

MAN, THE IMAGE OF GOD.

BY REV. HENRY GILES.

“FOR A MAN INDEED OUGHT NOT TO COVER HIS HEAD, FORASMUCH AS HE IS THE
IMAGE AND GLORY OF GOD.”—1 _Cor._ xi. 7.

“AND WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF, HE SAID—HOW MANY HIRED SERVANTS OF MY
FATHER’S HAVE BREAD ENOUGH AND TO SPARE, AND I PERISH WITH HUNGER. I
WILL ARISE, AND GO TO MY FATHER, AND WILL SAY UNTO HIM,—FATHER, I
HAVE SINNED AGAINST HEAVEN AND BEFORE THEE, AND AM NO MORE WORTHY TO
BE CALLED THY SON; MAKE ME AS ONE OF THY HIRED SERVANTS.”—_Luke_ xv.
17-19.

We are often told that man was originally created in the image of his
Maker; and, in the same connection, we are told that, in his fall, he
lost it. If this be true, we might expect that Scripture writers, in
alluding to fallen man, would never ascribe to him so holy a
resemblance. Paul, however, does it in one of the texts I have quoted;
and Paul is not alone in this ascription. In an ordinance to Noah,
immediately after the deluge, we find the same truth made the foundation
of a most solemn injunction. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall
his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”[518] Had the
resemblance of God been effaced from the soul of man in the fall of
Adam, there had been in this ordinance neither meaning nor solemnity.
Since, therefore, the sacred writer uses the fact of man’s likeness to
God to stamp deeper guilt on the crime of murder; since, moreover, that
fact is alleged after the narration of the fall,—we are justified by
Scripture in claiming this high and glorious distinction for our
universal nature.

I have quoted the second text, because the principle implied in it is
identical with that which I stand here to maintain, namely, that sin is
not of our nature, but against it; that it is not consistent with it,
but contradictory to it; that to be sinful, is not to be natural, but
unnatural. Sin, properly speaking, is moral delirium; and the progress
towards that last paroxysm which, by revulsion, arouses the soul from
its madness, is eloquently symbolised in the parable from which my
second text is taken. Having tried all that sin could offer him; having
sunk to the very husks of carnal appetites, and vainly sought thus to
satisfy the hunger of an immortal soul, wearied, disappointed, and
disgusted; satiated, but not satisfied, the prodigal arises from his
torpor; he awakens from his wildering dream; the delirium that so long
beset him is dispersed; with a calm and clear brain he finds himself in
open day-light, and discerns the empty and unsubstantial vanities for
which, in a false hope, he spent his labour and his strength, to reap at
last, in the bitterness of a repentant heart, nothing but grief,
tribulation, and anguish.

Sin is not a following of nature, but a violence on it; not conformity,
but contradiction to it. And so, as when returning life beats in the
palsied heart, or the dawn of reason bursts again on the madman’s brain,
the prodigal is said “to come to himself;” when the spirit of moral
renovation opens on him with compunctuous visitings of nature, and
reveals to him a full sense of his condition. In his guilt he was at
variance with all the moral instincts of humanity; and, in the sorrow of
repentance, he needed as much to be at peace with himself as with his
father. It is universally thus. God has established a certain order and
harmony in our nature, appointed to each faculty a place and a purpose;
and, in disturbing this arrangement, we become transgressors. We cannot
sin against God without also sinning against our own souls, for in them
is the primitive revelation of God; and in thus sinning against our own
souls, we may practically resist all the divine attributes of which our
weak faculties are the dim reflection; God’s wisdom in the abuse of our
intellect; his greatness in the loss of our moral dignity; his goodness
in the destruction of our charities; his purity in the corruption of our
hearts. Unitarians are accused of making sin a light matter. We protest
against the justice of the accusation. We hold sin to be the greatest of
evils, and the most dire of miseries. We hold it not as a mere social
impropriety, but we regard it as a dark disloyalty against conscience
and against God. Much suffering, we know, it inflicts on society; but
slight, indeed, is it compared with the ruin and devastation it works in
our own souls. Here, at first, God impressed his image; here, at last,
he fixes his tribunal: it is here his voice was heard in kindness, it is
here it shall be also heard in judgment. God’s government is, like
himself, spiritual. Man rules by outward power, God by inward
inspiration; and it is the peculiarity of the divine legislation that,
in the same individual, it attaches the condemnation to the crime;
forces transgression, to pronounce its own sentence, and to inflict its
own punishment. Human society has set up various bulwarks to guard its
security; human law-givers have accompanied their enactments with
fiercest penalties; and before Draco, and since, millions upon millions
of God’s erring creatures have been offered, a sanguinary sacrifice to
justice: superstition has personified all hideous evil in Satan,—the
mighty sinner of creation,—the minister of eternal vengeance,—the great
executioner of the universe; superstition has spread the limitless
prisons of hell, and filled them with tortures, and lit those flames
which it asserts are kept burning by the breath of an angry God, and are
never to be quenched during his everlasting existence; but we assert,
there is no scorn of society, there is no torture of most cruel laws,
there is no hell of superstition, deep, burning, and eternal as it may
be, that can equal the agonies which man’s own sense of wrong and
degradation heap upon his overwhelmed and sunken spirit. The glory of an
immortal soul is beyond all outward glories; the majesty of empires and
crowns, the splendour of the sun, the beauty of the firmament, the
riches of the universe, are nothing in comparison. We say to those to
whom it is our privilege to minister, though you were stripped of all
that constitute your frail and present happiness; though saddest
reverses became your lot; though God laid his hand heavily upon you and
your family, tore you from that rank and station that now make your
glory; though your children and friends were one by one snatched from
you, until you stood in the world-wilderness like a branchless and a
blasted tree; though all illness of body and grief of mind were
yours,—having an upright soul, it is but a light affliction compared
with a guilty conscience, which could wield over earth a universal
sceptre. The wages of sin is death,—death in the most tremendous meaning
of that tremendous word,—death of purity, death of holy confidence,
death of self-respect, death of inward and outward peace. Sin is misery,
and the worst of miseries,—one that carries with it its own vengeance,
is self-punished and self-cursed. True, we recognize no omnipresent and
invisible tempter; true, we hold no gross and eternal punishment; we
preach no original malediction, and no inherent depravity; we proclaim
no sin which blots out all light and hope around the mercy-seat of God,
and scathes the heart of man with everlasting despair. True, we show you
no maniac penitents, bewildered in the madness of remorse, shrieking on
the death-bed which conscience peoples with furies. We announce no deity
coming from heaven, putting on the frail existence of humanity, and
expiating on the cross the sin which had closed all access to peace. We
cannot, and if we could we would not, freeze your hearts with ideas of
torture, nor appal you with threatenings, nor echo on your ears the
groans that never cease, the weepings, the wailings, the knashing of
teeth, the sighs and hopeless complainings that swell for ever and ever
a thickening smoke of torment. Independently of these things, there are
other considerations more solemn,—more solemn, because more true,—there
is our conscience; there is our peace; there is the dignity of our whole
spiritual nature; there is reverence for duty; there is the power to
enjoy what is pure and beautiful; there is fitness for communion with
God, with all the righteous and the excellent,—these may be lost, or
clouded by sin; and they may be so lost as never fully to be recovered.
We count sin no slight evil, either as to its inward spirit or outward
influence: as I have stated, so we preach. And here, once for all, I
enter my protest against the impeachment which charges us with stripping
guilt of its danger and its awfulness.

I. Human nature, according to the point from which we regard it, has a
good or an evil aspect, each perfectly distinct, and each perfectly
true. The whole truth is then in neither separately, but in both
conjointly. Fixing too intently on either, and carrying our ideas to
extremes, we may, on the one side, flatter human nature above its
merits; or, on the other, be guilty towards it of injustice: on the one
side see in it all possible good, and on the other nothing but
incorrigible evil: on the one side soar into Utopianism, and on the
other descend into Calvinism. The Calvinistic view we hold to be false,
the Utopian impossible. We have no idea of any perfect goodness or
perfect happiness in this world, either possessed or to be attained.
Whilst we pace our way in this earthly pilgrimage, sin and suffering
must more or less track our steps; the prodigal’s confession, and the
publican’s prayer, must still be ours; the most favoured of God’s
children have to meet, and bear their allotted griefs,—to see their
glory grow dim, the desire of their eyes vanish, and to look onward and
backward through the mist of tears. Sufficient of stern realities press
upon us to crush at once the vision of a painless and sinless beatitude.
Physical wants and sufferings, the inevitable condition of our mortal
nature, were there no other, are of themselves equal to the purpose.
While an hospital exists among men, breathing with groans and sickly in
its very look; while a death-bed is found, steeped in the weepings of
affliction; whilst a stone marks and commemorates a spot where the dust
is sacred to affection and to sorrow; the wildest dreamer has enough to
rebuke his enthusiasm, and to cool it into soberness. And extreme or
exaggerated expectations of our nature, are in still stronger
contradiction to our moral constitution than our physical. In every
individual, however humble his grade, and however sluggish his
faculties, there is abundance to make him aware that perfection here is
neither his condition nor his destiny,—numberless desires, passions,
hopes, fears, expectancies; and no one imagines that all his desires are
to be gratified, all his passions fulfilled, all his hopes accomplished,
all his fears removed, all his expectancies realized. Want and wish
pursue their strife to the end. As it is with the individual, so is it
with society: for as society is an aggregate of individual persons,
social character is an aggregate of individual characters. Evils, sins,
and sorrows, must always, we fear, exist, both in the depths and on the
surface of the great community: we look for no period in future time,
when those antagonist passions and rivalries shall be extinct—which
place man into resisting contact to man, when riches, and fame, and
power, shall not be sought for with avidity and strife, and create the
throng of passions which spring from their desire and their abuse: we
look for no period when the strong universally will use their strength
in righteousness and mercy, when the poor and the weak shall cease to be
victims, and have full justice done to them: we dare scarcely hope for a
period when the massive throne of tyranny, whether political or
sacerdotal, should be swept away upon the flood of emancipated
progression; and, with equal fear, we think of the tyrannies of caste
and creed, not less dark or obstinate; and although not entirely in
despair, we look forward with timid anticipation to a time when the war
of opinion shall be changed for Christian peace, and the fierce cry of
bigotry give place to the hymn with which the angels sung our Saviour’s
birth. We see no prospect that men shall lay aside their selfishness,
and act in the spirit of universal charity, or that they shall so curb
it as to harmonize it with the good of others! that they shall become
universally disinterested, forbearing, candid, and generous; that the
proud man will put off his scorn, and the oppressor break or throw away
his sceptre. Moral and social evils will unquestionably be mitigated,
but the sources of them lie too deep for extinction,—were extinction
desirable, which it is not: for these elements of our nature are wrong
only accidentally; while, essentially, they are right. Knowing that an
argument gains nothing by concealing the objections to it, I have thus
far been liberal in admissions: I will make one admission more. I
acknowledge that an over-estimate of the actual condition and prospects
of human nature, as well as their undue depreciation, is likely to have
injurious consequences. One of the worst is this: that, creating vivid
and unreal hopes, they rebound with harsh and cruel disappointments; the
fervour of expectation turns into despair; the glow of generous, but
blasted enthusiasm, cools down into apathy, if it does not wither into
cynicism; exstacy that was too intense to last, and too extravagant to
be well founded, either renounces altogether its early faith, or,
casting away its hope, complains through life in grief and despondency.
Desires, bright and beautiful, are broken, and their light scattered in
the dust. Aspirations, once too big for utterance, turn back to the
bosom that nourished them,—hitherto their palace, now their prison,—and
there waste away in hopeless thinking, or die in the echoes of
unavailing murmurs. Such mistakes are to be lamented, but not to be
scorned; for that suffering is not to be despised which has its
foundation in profound and extensive sympathy. And it is not in the
power of minds more obtuse and slow to measure or conceive the pain of
those who, with a moral imagination that goes out to the very limits of
humanity, and a piercing sensibility that enters into the hidden places
where suffering weeps unnoted, and sin lies down unredeemed, that in the
spirit of unselfish love feels the woe and guilt of a race, as though
they were personal afflictions, it is not easy, I say, to estimate the
pain such men undergo: when some conjuncture of events, which seemed the
dawn of virtue, of liberty, of peace, of brotherhood, turns out a
mockery and a contradiction; when they live to see that their noblest
aspirings were but as the babblings of vanity; that the circumstances of
which they augured most hopefully, proved as empty as shapes of vapour
painted by the rising sun; that changes, of which they prophesied in
most exulting strains, reversed all their calculations. This is no vague
speculation; there have been many instances in fact, and we can imagine
many more. Had Luther been defeated in his attempt for religious
reformation; had Howard departed to his rest with the sorrowful
conviction that he left cells as dark, and prisoners as hopeless, as he
found them; had Wilberforce closed his life in despair of all redemption
for the slave; had Washington fought in vain the fight for independence,
seeing no prospect for his country, but submissively to bear the yoke
for ever; we have no doubt that each would have experienced a more
oppressive anguish than from the keenest of personal afflictions. In
such cases there were, of course, the soundness of conception and wisdom
of execution which ensure success; but in others, it often happens that
the disappointment is not the less bitter because the expectations were
baseless.

Opposed to this scheme is that of rigid Calvinism. By the latter system
the whole nature is described as hopelessly corrupt, and language
affords no colouring which can give shades deep enough for the
theological picture. Minutest analysis is used to prove man such a
being, that when considered you find him to be a compound of fiend and
brute—such a being that you wonder God would allow him to disgrace
existence, to pollute creation, and not annihilate, and blot him out
from the universe, such a being that if correctly described the very
continuance of society becomes a miracle and a marvel. His intellect, we
are told, is utterly and spiritually darkened, his will the slave of
sin, set to work iniquity greedily, his imagination corrupt, his
passions rebellious, his affections perverted, incapable of good in
thought, word, or deed, and completely devoted to evil. Taking this view
as correct, we might suppose the prime use of man’s understanding was to
devise wickedness, of his memory to prolong the thoughts of it, of his
will to form only guilty resolves, and of his passions to riot in all
that is vile and ungodly. We have thus the whole spiritual and moral man
steeped in black and hateful infamy. To sustain these assertions, appeal
is made to experience; and proof is found of entire and universal
depravity in history, laws, and literature. Any conclusion drawn from
these goes but to testify what we are ready to concede, that man is an
imperfect being, and that the evidence of his imperfection is stamped
upon most of his actions and productions. But the testimony is partially
and unjustly quoted. Another estimate of the same evidence would argue
as strongly, and even more so, for the inherent goodness of man. If we
take the instance of human laws it will at once illustrate and confirm
my assertion. If laws prove the existence and universality of crime,
they prove also the existence and universality of the sense of justice,
for laws, so far as they embody general principles, are the expression
of common and collective sentiments. Indirectly, they prove yet more:
for, after all, the great mass of truth and rectitude exists
independently of laws, is such as no law could reach, is in fact such
that without it no laws could have a moment’s force. In the effort to
make good an indictment against human nature, an industry and labour are
expended, as perverse as they are pertinacious; the lowest purlieus of
depravity are raked, the deepest mines of wickedness are worked with a
zeal as ardent as the veriest miser would seek for hidden treasure, the
blackest evils of the worst times are adduced, the pages of history that
are the most darkly stained, are torn out and severed from the context;
and for what purpose is all this? Why, to make the noblest work of God
odious; to vilify that nature which was glorified in the person of our
Lord Jesus Christ. If human nature is so thoroughly depraved and vile,
as so frequently asserted, the scheme of orthodoxy is most improbable,
and a fallen humanity, as it paints humanity, instead of giving
Christianity consistency, renders it the most perplexing of paradoxes.
For if man be thus naturally vile and depraved—corrupted in every
faculty, whence these high counsels in heaven concerning him; whence the
union of three infinite and co-eternal persons to save a wretch, the
extinction of whom would have been mercy to the universe; whence the
counsels of the Father, the incarnation of the Son, and that death of a
God-man on Calvary, at which we are told the angels trembled and
creation stood aghast; along with all, the constant and supernatural
agency of the Holy Spirit? If man be really as worthless and as wicked
as we are often told he is, all this, (with reverence I speak it,) seems
a want of wisdom and a waste of strength. Though it may be considered
over bold I will go a step further. If the one sin of Adam was to work
such complete ruin in all his countless posterity; if it was to be the
source of such an irremediable wickedness, and unrelieved misery, if
notwithstanding the united work of three infinite agents, there was
still to be a bottomless pit and an everlasting smoke of torment, a
black and boundless ocean of guilt and pain, swelled by gloomy streams
ever and ever flowing in from earth, for which infants were sealed in
their birth, to which the lost are consigned in their death—if this be
the lot to which the great mass of our species is destined—of which the
first tear is a symbol, and the last sigh a passport,—if hell still is
more peopled than heaven, then the infinite agencies of redemption might
have been spared, this hopeless and illimitable anguish might have been
extinguished, and the annihilation of our first parents would have been
the greater mercy and the greater salvation.

Appeal is made to scripture with still greater confidence than to
experience. There is one to whom reference is never made for testimony
to this doctrine, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ; and if such
doctrine were true, it is strange that he who needeth not that any
should testify of man, because he knew what was in man, did not reveal
it, and stamp it with all the solemnity of his authority. It may with
confidence be asserted that such a dogma as the inherent and universal
corruption of human nature is neither asserted nor justified by any
Scripture from Genesis to Revelations. The Bible, I admit to be a moral,
and also a providential history; and in this relation, I admit also,
that it contains many strong statements of human wickedness; but they
all refer to periods of peculiar degeneracy, and a fair study of the
context will plainly show they have defined limitations. In the appendix
to this lecture I will subjoin a list of texts usually pleaded for this
doctrine, the mere exhibition of which is sufficient to expose its utter
want of a Scriptural foundation.[519] On the present occasion I shall
confine my remarks to the proofs alleged from Paul to the Romans.
Stripping the subject of all the mysticism with which it has been
encumbered, and identifying ourselves with the mind and times of the
apostle, let us clearly see what was his object, and then we shall truly
apprehend the nature of his argument. Paul’s object was twofold: first,
to show that the Gospel was universal. This was opposed to the
circumscribed nationality of Judaism. Secondly, that it was inward and
spiritual. This was again opposed to the ritual and legal exactitude of
Judaism. The General course, therefore, of the argument is directed
against Jewish thoughts and Jewish prejudices, and to maintain the
admissibility of the Gentiles to the Christian church. He has then to
make good two propositions:—namely, “that God is impartially and equally
the God of all men; and that fidelity of heart is the essence of all
true religion.” We might sum up the whole system of the Apostle in two
simple sentences of his letter: “Is he the God of the Jews only? is he
not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also.” The other
assertion is, that “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.”
Proving these two principles, he utterly demolishes all Jewish claims.
The Apostle proceeds to open the new aspect which Jesus presented of the
character of God—that of grace or mercy. Moses proclaimed Jehovah as a
God of law, Jesus revealed him as a God of grace. Paul cautiously, but
with power, argues most convincingly that in this relation only can men
confidently approach him, but in this relation there is free access for
all. None have a claim from merit, for all are guilty. With remarkable
prudence, he takes, first, the case of the Gentile, and the state of the
world in his own time supplied him examples in melancholy abundance.
There was, therefore, no ground for Gentile exultation or Jewish
jealousy, for the gospel was offered to the Heathens, not as a thing of
merit but of favour, not as reward for their holiness, but as a remedy
for their sin. To the Jews, who looked with bitter contempt on all men
but themselves, who imagined every spiritual advantage was for them
alone, this would be most offensive. The next question which thence
arose was this:—As the Gentiles obviously were accepted before God, only
on the ground of his mercy, whether the Jews could claim acceptance on
any other ground? The Apostle had most convincingly shown that the
Gentiles had violated the sense of duty inscribed upon their hearts,
with equal force of reasoning he proves that the Jews had violated the
precepts written in their law; one, therefore, had no right to accuse
the other—both were guilty in the sight of God, and both had equal need
of his mercy.—But, the Jews were not only wrong in their ideas on the
extent of the Creator’s goodness, but also on the true nature of human
virtue. As they considered his special providence confined to
themselves, so they imagined the only acceptable obedience was in the
rigid observance of their own minute precepts and ceremonies. In
opposition to this Paul contends that justification is by faith, and not
by the works of the law—not a faith which implies a mere assent to a
series of scholastic propositions, but a faith which consists in a
trusting and confiding spirit. The Apostle places saving holiness, not
in outward and measured precepts, but in living and inward principles—in
allegiance to God and Christ, in the loyalty of a true and pure heart—in
the spirit that makes obedience more a life than a law. To say then that
God holds man sternly to a code of inevitable condemnation, to say that
any one transgression, however slight, sets at naught the whole tendency
of the character and life, not only leaves Paul’s reasoning without
force, but subverts the gospel to its very foundations. Our Lord in the
parable represents a master as thus addressing his unforgiving servant,
“O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou
desiredst me—shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy
fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?” The character of God as
described by orthodoxy is the contradictory of this. But we are informed
that God is a Judge, and, analogous to human judges, on the tribunal of
the universe, lays aside all private considerations. The assimilation is
at once low and false. God has no evidence to examine, no probabilities
to balance, no decision to arrive at, no formal sentence to
pronounce—there is no distinction in the case between God and man,
analogous to that between an earthly judge, and his accused
fellow-mortal; there is no such distinction with God as a personal
relation and a public one, for God is the same in all relations. His
dominion is in the spirit; there he rewards, and there he punishes;
there is no reward separate from the direct results of righteousness
itself issuing in blessedness, and no penalty separate from the results
of sin itself issuing suffering, and each in the proportion in which the
character is sanctified or depraved. Forgiveness of sin then, is peace
of conscience, springing from a regenerated heart, and when man with a
thoughtful and enlightened spirit can forgive himself, God forgives him.
We, at least those of us personally engaged in this controversy,
maintain no such doctrine as the pardon of sin on condition of
repentance—as if repentance were something offered and remission an
equivalent received instead. On the contrary, we see in repentance but
the painful revulsion of a soul from a moral state found by sad
experience to be unworthy of it: a struggle upward in many sighs and
fears to the high estate from which it has fallen, in repentance itself
we see but an additional instance of the anguish which sin never fails
to entail. We regard it not as a merit, but a penalty. We grant the
universality of sin, as fully as any can assert it. We know it is
written, “all men have sinned and come short of the glory of God”—and we
admit the truth of the assertion. Wherever man is, there will be sin,
for we expect in no place—no, not in heaven itself—to find in man the
perfection of a deity. It has been asserted, that every man has an ideal
in his soul above his actual conduct. This has been used for
condemnation of our nature, we take it as the glory of it—as an evidence
that the spirit of God is extinguished in no man. We are ready to
concede, not that the open transgressor comes short of the glory of God,
but the best men come far short of the glory of their own ideal, and the
sense of that short coming is acute, in the degree that their
apprehensions of moral loveliness are clear and purified. Every man with
his conscience in a right state laments with more heart-felt sorrow the
sins which are inward than those which are outward, not those which have
been exposed to the world, but those which only God has seen. We desire
in no sense to mitigate the deep injury of sinfulness; but when we are
told, that God, in vindication of his holy law, must subject man to an
unsparing standard of judgment, orthodoxy to be consistent should have
the unmitigated penalty inflicted on every personal transgressor. We are
unable to conceive how the righteousness of any law can be vindicated by
contriving an escape for the guilty by the suffering of the innocent. We
do not make void the law—nay, we establish it, for we hold, and we
preach it also, that transgression vindicates in the person of the
sinner the claims of holiness, righteously and completely, in anguish
and tribulation. I here close the polemical division of this lecture,
and now for the remaining time I shall dwell on views more positive.

II. Having elucidated two extreme and false systems of human nature, I
shall now adduce some of these essentials which properly entitle it to
be considered in the likeness of God. I shall pass over the faculties of
mere intellect and taste, for these are not denied. I do this for the
sake of brevity, for it would be easy to prove that without sense of
moral beauty in the soul, even these could have no high developement,
philosophy would lose its wisdom, science its uses, painting its glow,
architecture its majesty, sculpture its grace, poetry and eloquence
their inspiration. It would be easy, I maintain, to show, that without
conceptions of the divine, the true, the right, and the beautiful, there
would be neither power nor materials in human nature from which to
create a single great work of mind, nothing to evince the might of
genius or the immortality of thought. I shall, however, in all my
subsequent remarks, confine myself to what without dispute is strictly
moral. We contend not for an infallibility in man’s reason, neither do
we assert impeccability in his will; as we admit error in the one, we
can admit sin in the other. But when we speak of the moral nature of
man, we regard it not partially, but as a whole, not in its accidental
exceptions, but in its essential constitution. Of this constitution we
assert that virtue and goodness are the true and native attributes. For
the position that sin is not natural but unnatural, not in accordance
with humanity but contrary to it, we have the testimony of the great
bishop Butler.[520]—“Every work,” he says, “of nature and art is a
system; and as every particular thing, both natural and artificial, is
for some use or purpose, out of or beyond itself, one may add to what
has already been brought into the true idea of a system, its
conduciveness to this or more ends. Let us instance in a watch: Suppose
the several parts taken to pieces and placed apart from each other; let
a man have ever so exact a notion of these several parts, unless he
considers the respect and relations which they have to each other, he
will not have any thing like the idea of a watch. Suppose these several
parts brought together, and any how united, neither will he yet, be the
union ever so close, have an idea which will bear any resemblance to
that of a watch. But let him view these several parts put together, or
consider them as to be put together in the manner of a watch—let him
form a notion of the relation which these several parts have to each
other, all conducive in their several ways to this purpose, showing the
hour of the day,—and then he has the idea of a watch. Thus it is with
the inward nature of man. Appetites, passions, affections, and the
principle of reflection, conscience, considered severally as the inward
parts of our inward nature, do not at all give us an idea of the system
of this nature. And this our nature is adapted to virtue, as from the
idea of a watch it appears, that its nature, that is, constitution or
system, is adapted to measure time. What in fact commonly happens is
nothing to the question. Every work of art is apt to be out of order:
but this is so far from being according to its system, that let the
disorder increase, and it will destroy it.” The author then goes on to
say, that—“Nothing can possibly be more contrary to our nature than
vice, meaning by nature not only the several parts of our internal
frame, but also the constitution of it. Poverty and disgrace, tortures
and death, are not so contrary to it. Misery and injustice are indeed
equally contrary to some different parts of our nature taken singly, but
injustice is moreover contrary to the whole constitution of the nature.”
And here I will repeat a fine remark from the same noble thinker, used
already, in a note by one of my fellow-labourers in this discussion.—“We
should learn,” says the philosophical prelate, “to be cautious lest we
charge God foolishly, by ascribing that to him, or the nature he has
given us, which is wholly owing to its abuse. Men may speak of the
degeneracy and corruption of the world, according to the experience they
have had of it, but human nature considered as the divine workmanship
should, methinks, be treated as sacred: for in the image of God made he
man.”[521]

In human nature, under all its forms, we recognize two eternal moral
elements; which, though frequently perverted, can never be destroyed. I
mean sympathy and conscience, the feeling of a common nature, and the
sense of right and wrong. If we consider the truth, the power, and
extent of sympathy, though nothing else remained in man, this alone
would prove his assimilation to God; would prove, to use the language of
the Apostle, that he was still a partaker of the divine nature. In what
numberless forms is it manifested!—rising from instinct to godliness. We
see it in family affections. Wherever we meet a home, however rude the
beings that it shelters, whether it be scooped in the snow, or be a tent
on the desert, wherever the loves of parents and children, of brothers
and sisters, are interchanged within the sphere of its operation, we
have the spirit of a common heart. We see it also in love of country.
From those who surround him in his dwelling, man enlarges the compass of
his affections, until they embrace those who, with himself, tread the
same soil, and speak the same tongue. The general glory, honour, and
prosperity of his country, become dear to him; and from habits of loving
association, there, more than any where else, the heavens have a
brighter smile, and nature wears a kinder face. Every nation has had its
patriots; and, whether successful or not, whether victorious in the
field or bleeding on the scaffold, they evince the power with which the
sentiment of common good can overcome the force of selfish interests. We
see the strength of sympathy in the love of man generally, and
especially in that species of it which assumes the form of compassion.
Whence else the mass of goodness which proves that humanity, with all
its evils and its errors, is a most merciful nature. Misery, in any
form, is an appeal that is rarely disregarded. The stranger, whose face
we never saw before, if it be seamed and marred by suffering, in his
misfortune becomes a brother; and what is yet harder, our foe, in his
sorrow, seems once more a friend. Men find it hard to pardon a
prosperous enemy; but there are few so callous whom a fallen one would
not disarm of hatred. Hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, desertion,
orphanage, imprisonment, sickness—every want that afflict the
wretched—have their provision in human mercy, not only from individual
hands, but from collective hearts. When man is maligned as utterly
corrupt—as at enmity with God and his kind, we may point to thousands
occupied in works of beneficence, and to refugees for misery in every
land, and claim as witnesses against the accusers. And we stop not with
the woes that fall directly under the senses;—sufferers who wasted their
sighs and their tears in darkness, have been thought of with grief by
those whom they knew not, and visited with glad tidings when they least
expected. The piercing supplication of wretchedness has been sometimes
wafted across continents and oceans without failing, or being weakened
by the distance; and the cry of anguish, uttered at one extreme of
earth, has fallen with power on human hearts at the other. We speak not
of bodily wants alone, but equally of the soul’s wants. The ignorant
have those who feel and work for them, and there are some who do not
scorn the most guilty; there are many pure souls who never themselves
knew contamination, who can turn with mercy to the despised, and bleed
with sorrow that the work of God should lie so deep in ruin. And,
whether with right or wrong principles, whether by right or wrong
agencies, whether in right or wrong methods, this sentiment can have no
illustration so sublime as the various exertions here, and throughout
the globe, for the religious regeneration of mankind. Is there, then,
nothing godlike in the spirit which gives unity and love to home;
nothing godlike in the spirit which, with unselfish devotion, causes a
man to sacrifice his own interests in his nation’s good; nothing godlike
in the spirit which makes the sufferer a brother, whether stranger or
enemy; which can pierce the haunts of loathsome want; which can feel for
the body and the soul, and draw near, in generous pity, both to distress
and crime; which dreams, with tortured imagination, of the unseen
tribulation of the dungeon, and rests not until the fresh breeze is on
the prisoner’s brow, and the bright and cheerful sunshine on his eye;
which stretches forth its ample charity to the utmost regions of earth;
and, wherever there is a complaint of physical or spiritual need, admits
it is a brother’s cry, and hears it not in vain?

The very passions, which might seemingly be urged against this
reasoning, are but so many confirmations of it. Men have sometimes tried
to be independent of others; they failed. Men have tried to live apart
from others, and to dispense with the general affections of life; they
failed. Men have tried to set opinion at defiance, and to disregard
esteem; they also failed. And, in the few rare and extreme cases in
which men have been more than usually sordid, selfish, and anti-social,
the isolation to which they have been abandoned evinced their conduct to
be averse to nature; and, whilst it proved their folly, inflicted their
chastisement. Emulation, envy, jealousy, vanity, ambition, and various
other passions, afford evidence to the same purpose: for, what is
emulation, but the struggle for the greatest share of appreciation; and
envy, but the malignity of disappointment; and jealousy, but the
suspicion of not possessing it,—perchance, of not deserving it; and
vanity, but the puny desire to attain, or the timid hope that it already
has it; and ambition, but the strong effort of a strong nature to have a
lasting life in the admiration and memory of men: all, in their several
ways, converging in evidence of one truth, namely, that community of
feeling is amongst the greatest distinctions of our nature. In truth, it
is only by this that man understands man. It is this that opens to man
the heart of man; that, from the first human being to the last, forms a
chain of common emotion, which indissolubly links mankind of all
generations into one brotherhood. Without this, history would be a dead
letter; laws and customs, but puzzles; arts, confused and shapeless;
past languages and literature, but empty babble; and by-gone religions
and philosophy, but unintelligible names. This common sympathy is that
by which we know the meaning of history; by which we know the force of
laws and customs; by which we know the beauty and immortality of art; by
which we are enabled to interpret language, literature, philosophy, and
religion; by which we are made one with our race, and identified in
kindred with all that have ever ennobled or adorned it.

A second characteristic I have mentioned, in man, is the sense of duty,
the sense of right and wrong. In this more than in any other quality he
bears the impress of his divine original. The sense of duty is an
essential part of human nature. A man might as well endeavour to lay
aside the consciousness of his rational existence as to get rid of the
idea of an immoveable distinction between good and evil, between virtue
and vice. I know that, in the operations of the moral sense, there have
been apparent contradictions; but if we were to deny it on this ground,
we should deny the existence even of reason itself, for many of its
conclusions are apparently contradictory. We assert the reality of the
rational faculty, but not its infallibility; in like manner, we assert
the reality of the moral faculty, but not its infallibility. I know that
it seems various in its operation, not only from national and religious
differences, but also from individual sophistries. Men pronounce just
judgment on the sins of others; but when they come to pass sentence on
their own, they invent a thousand excuses for justification or leniency:
but these excuses do not satisfy themselves. And when they are alone
with their own hearts, in silent and sober thought, the deception will
not bear to be scrutinized, and truth is justified by conscience. The
sense of duty is universal. Wherever we meet man, we meet one who, in
some way or other, is the creature of moral feeling; and although the
moral sentiment may be superstitiously or fanatically directed, there
are essential ideas in which it never changes. Wild actions and awful
evils may, I know, be perpetrated under a mistaken sense of duty, and
done with the fiercer zeal because they are considered to be duty. Under
its influence, men can not only sacrifice others but themselves: in one
age or country, a man can lacerate himself before an image or an idol,
or look calmly on the rack on which a tortured fellow creature shivers,
or he can come from his retreat of self-infliction to the place where he
persecutes; and, if the case compelled, he could go himself from that to
the stake of martyrdom. The sentiment is true to itself, and the
misdirection of it lies in other sources: yet with all its diversities,
justice, mercy, and truth, have ever the instinctive approval of
conscience, whilst wrong, cruelty, and falsehood, under whatever forms
disguised, are abhorrent to it. The sense of duty presents man to us in
the most glorious aspects of his nature; and that sentiment is not
always misdirected. By its power in the soul, we observe appetites
governed, passions subjected, and temptation overcome; by its
inspiration, when necessity calls, we observe men devoting themselves in
the spirit of martyrdom to truth and right, casting pleasure aside,
forsaking whatever was dear to them, and despising life itself. Whatever
change for good has occurred in the history of man, is a witness for the
force of duty, for it has been worked out in much travail and
self-denial; whatever we have most precious in our spiritual or social
blessings, whether our liberties or our religion, we owe to the spirit
of duty; it is enshrined in the memory of all our benefactors; it is
consecrated in the blood of martyrs. Signal instances of this kind may
strike more forcibly from their distinctness and saliency; but the
mightiest energy of duty is in the economy of general life. Go into the
open mart of the world, and, in all the astonishing complexities that
are spread over that wide scene, consider to what an extent man trusts
man, and is trusted in return, mutual confidence forming the immutable
foundation of the vast social structure. It is base injustice to human
nature to assert that all this is the effect of interest or fear;
without pervading conscience, mere interest or fear would be as
powerless to sustain society as the arm of man to move the orbs of
heaven; without conscience, human laws could either have no existence or
no power,—mere ropes of sand, that a touch could sever; passion would
have no scruple, desire no limit, but power; and selfishness no control,
but a superior opposing force: the strong would prostrate the weak by
violence, and the weak would in turn overreach the strong by guile,
deceit, and fraud.

I am willing to admit, as I have before admitted, that social man is
encompassed with many injurious influences, and I know that he does not
always escape guiltless: I know that many vices are generated in
society, and nourished by its corruptions; that pride, both worldly and
religious, walks through life with anti-social heart and clouded brow,
wrapped up in its own miserable importance, exulting in vanities,
self-worshipping and self-enslaved; that covetousness, surfeited with
acquisition, still works on, and still cries “more;” that licentiousness
goes its way in darkness, and leaves destruction in its path; that envy
broods over its own solitary and unacknowledged malice, sickens at the
pleasure or the fame it cannot reach; that gospel charity is often slain
in the collision of creeds and passions, and Christian zeal heated into
bigotry; but these, I repeat again, are not our nature, and judgment
against it on such grounds is quite as unjust, as if we should seek out
the hospitals to test the health of a community, visit but prisons to
decide on its morals, and pass only through asylums for lunatics to form
an opinion of its intelligence. But even in its sins, humanity loses not
the evidence of its divine relationship. The image of God may be
darkened, but the impress is deep as ever. The capacity of sin equally
implies the capacity of holiness; transgression implies the knowledge of
a law, inspired or revealed; the violation, therefore, of moral
injunctions includes the high capability of moral perception. Whence but
from the greatness of our nature is the deep misery of sin—whence, I
might say, but from its holiness?—whence but from its adaptation to
goodness, are the ruin and the dislocation which guilt can work in our
whole inward frame and constitution? Thence it is, that it is that the
conscience, dethroned and humiliated, is torn by remorse, worse
incomparably than bodily torture: thence it is, that the affections
either become a total and disorganized wreck, or, wounded by a sense of
shame and lost dignity, bow down with sorrow or wither in despair.
Thence it is, that the good and pure are shunned, and the evil sought,
for the one cause a feeling of contrast too painful to be borne, the
other afford a refuge by their moral assimilation, and the spirit needs
support wherever it can be found. Thence it is, that when the guilty
have utterly lost their own respect, and the approbation of the
virtuous, that crime becomes desperation and remorse madness,—that
conscience is silenced in delirious self-defence, and that plunge after
plunge sinks them lower and lower in the gulf of spiritual perdition.
And yet human character is rarely ever such a wreck as not to have some
remnant to justify its origin and parentage; some embers of the sacred
fire smouldering in the sanctuary,—some gleams of affection,—some
dawnings of memory, that open to the weary spirit the quiet and
happiness of better days,—some touches of mercy that has yet a sigh for
wretchedness,—some visitings of compunction,—some unconscious desires to
be good once more,—some timid hopes of pardon,—some secret prayers to be
made better. The human soul is a great mystery, and so indeed is human
life; we observe a few palpable and external manifestations, but how
little know we of the secret and unseen workings! That the good in every
human being, even such as strikes us as the worst, preponderates over
the evil, is, I am persuaded, not the imagination of a fanciful charity,
but a fact and a reality.

But though more crime existed in actual life than has ever been alleged,
our doctrine would yet be true. We enter on no defence of man in the
whole of his conduct. We contend for his inherent capacities, and in
arguing for these, we are entitled to select our illustrations from the
highest specimens of nature, and not from the lowest. We contend for its
capacity to subjugate passion to principle—to sacrifice present desires
to progressive good—to resign selfish interests to human ones—to give
the spiritual and eternal a predominance over the sensual and the
temporal: and we contend for this, not as a thing possible, but a thing
proved: we contend for what has its evidence in abundance of examples.
If we could point to one patriot, to one philanthropist, to one martyr,
to one holy man, in each of these the fact would have sufficient
attestation: but humanity has its armies of patriots, and
philanthropists, and martyrs, and saints. With these the lowest of us
are united in a kindred nature, and dignified by a common brotherhood.
But passing from characters of this magnitude, come we to the ordinary
existence that is common to us all. Every life, from the palace to the
cottage, is one more or less of self-denial and labour—one in which we
must continually defer to others and work for them. Cast your
imagination over the vast throng of this busy world: consider the
countless modes in which they are all toiling with head and hand, from
the man of genius to the labourer of field or factory,—from the proudest
merchant to his meanest servant,—scarcely a movement in it all that has
not a reference to others beyond the agent,—scarcely a movement that has
not some connection with a human love or a human duty. Retire from the
crowd to their dwellings, and, except in cases of last degradation, they
are, on the whole, retreats of mutual kindness. If there be grief, there
is compassion,—if there be illness, there is unwearied tenderness,—if
there be death, there is sorrow. It will perhaps be said, that all this
may very well consist with a reprobate state. If so, it only proves that
no state is so reprobate, as not to be consistent with a great mass of
excellence. If to confer happiness and show mercy be not goodness, we
are at a loss to explain the goodness of God or of Christ. And as we
descend in the scale of society, we discover human nature with peculiar
trials, and also with peculiar virtues. Amongst the poor and laborious
classes we may find some grossness, but we find much goodness; and to a
considerate mind the wonder will be, that their grossness is not more,
and their goodness less. We behold them often patient under manifold
oppressions, forbearing against many wrongs; uncomplaining in the midst
of afflictions, toiling on from youth to age in the same routine of
laborious monotony; resigned in illness, though it takes that strength
from them which is their only refuge, merciful to each other, giving aid
to want out of want; all divine evidence that there is in humanity a
godlike spirit, which nothing can suppress, not sin, ignorance, poverty,
nor any ill of life.

I have spoken of our divine affinity chiefly in the goodness that unites
us to our species, but there is a tendency towards God himself in which
that affinity is still more clearly seen. It is made manifest in our
capacity to know God. God is a spirit, and must be spiritually
apprehended. We must therefore have some attributes in common. If there
be not some qualities in our souls corresponding to the nature of God,
he would be to us a nonentity, and we could neither know him nor love
him. The knowledge of God is a spiritual revelation, and by that which
is within us we interpret the revelation and give to it a meaning—his
power in the movement of our will—his intelligence in the rectitude of
our reason—his goodness in the sympathies of our affections—his holiness
in the law of our conscience. It is made manifest in our capacity to
imitate God. The apostle says, “Be ye followers of God as dear
children;” and our Saviour himself exhorts us to “be merciful even as he
is merciful,” and to be “perfect even as he is perfect.” To imitate any
being with whom we had no assimilation of nature, it requires no
argument to prove an utter impossibility. But this principle has a moral
value far beyond its theological import—in breaking down the distance
which we usually place between our hearts and God; in drawing him within
the circle of our nearest affections; in uniting us to him in a more
filial trust, in taking fear from our love and inspiring life in our
obedience—proving to us that God is verily and indeed our Father, as
Christ is our brother; that God our Father is imitable by his children;
that Christ our brother by a perfect conformity to his will has revealed
and proved its truth. That we have affinity with God is further made
manifest by our need of him. Consciously or unconsciously every man is
seeking after God, or after what God alone can give him. Whether blindly
or otherwise, we all feel the want of him in our souls, for in whatever
direction we turn our desires, we are yearning after the perfect and the
infinite: we have the proof of it in our disgust, our dissatisfactions,
and discontents. Who does not hear of the insufficiency of the world?
And what does that mean? The vanity of pleasure. But why is pleasure
vain? why does he who tries it in all its enchantments, weary at last
even to repugnance? The vexations of wealth? But why are riches
vexatious? Why do they disappoint the hope that longed so deeply for
them, and leave complaints still in all the fullness of success? The
fatigues of power? But, why again is power fatiguing, when no sacrifices
were too painful, and no toils too harrassing in the career for its
attainment? It is simply because pleasure, wealth, or power, can never
fully occupy the human soul, unlimited in capacity and desire,
perishable things bring it only chagrin, when in lavish expectation it
looks for complete fruition. Nor is it alone that we call the world,
which proves insufficient, but still higher, the pursuits of knowledge,
and the creations of genius; the greatest sage feels himself at last a
child, and the most inspired poet wishes for things more beautiful than
he has ever conceived, and scenes brighter than he has ever imagined.
Even in truest religion this sentiment may be discerned in operation, in
alternations between fear and faith, between despondency and hope. A
longing for the invisible and the boundless may be traced in all the
higher forms of superstition—in every effort to overcome the thraldom of
the body and to achieve the spiritual emancipation, from the ascetics
that in the first centuries peopled the deserts of Asia to the
flagellants that in the middle centuries overran the continent of
Europe; from the penitent that scorches himself on an Indian plain, to
the monk that lashes himself in a Spanish cloister. Now to what do all
these, some true and some mistaken, refer, to what do they point?
Evidently to something which the soul cannot find on earth, to God,
perfect and infinite, in whom at last it will attain repose and
fullness. And thus we have two great truths intimated at the same time;
for the conscious want that tells us of our need of God reveals also our
immortality, and the one is the glory of the other.

Now, in conclusion, let me ask to what purpose is all this blackening of
human nature? It cannot promote humility; for to be humble is not to be
degraded. If a sense of degradation corresponded with humility, we
should be more humble as we descended to the level of the brutes. It
cannot inspire a poignant sense of guilt, nor a true feeling of
confession, for as it takes away natural dignity it leaves nothing from
which a man can fall; and as it denies personal capacity, it must in the
same degree weaken the feeling of personal accountability. He whose
moral sorrow will ever lie most profoundly is one that has the
consciousness of having abused high and great capacities; of having, by
his own sins, become unworthy of his nature; of having done despite to
the spirit of God within him, the light that lighteneth every man that
cometh into the world; of having apostatised from his godlike destiny.
But to tell a man, as orthodoxy does, first that he is morally imbecile,
and then that he is personally guilty, is an absolute derangement and
confusion of all our moral ideas. It is well that essentially the
sources of our conduct in general, are beyond the reach of theology; or
doctrines like these, would stop all motives to exertion, would destroy
the hopes of the good, and strike dead the efforts of the penitent. As
it is they are not without great and serious evils. They take from
virtue that which is its most noble distinction. when rightly
understood, a sense of individual and independent action:—they attach a
slavish spirit to religion, which, to a great extent, stifles the free
and voluntary service of the heart. Yet worse still, to maintain an
extreme theory, men are driven to malign their nature, and to seek for
all manner of blame against it—to deny the excellence and reality of
virtues—of which an unsophisticated observer could not entertain a
doubt, to invent all motives for goodness but the true ones. It is a sad
necessity in which men place themselves when they are compelled to
violence to their own hearts, and injustice to those of others, when
their system forces them to repress their rising pleasure in the beauty
of virtue, and to change their unbidden admiration into qualified
condemnation. If the man called heretical, or one called unregenerate,
visit the sick, clothe the naked, do in fact every work of mercy, have a
heart of love and a hand of bounty—revere his God in all sincerity, and
worship him in truth, the evangelical moralist must assert, that it is
all worthless, and is, in fact, of the nature of sin. Though one who is
called regenerate should do no more, and to all evidence, not in a
better spirit, he is esteemed a most godly and pious Christian. The man
who cannot believe as the creeds or a party require, may do every work
which Christ will judge him by, and be refused his name; but if he has
the blessing of his master in heaven, he may care little for the
anathema of men upon earth. If Unitarianism delivered us from nothing
else than this spiritual injustice, it is a great redemption.

If I am asked, in turn, why I maintain the doctrine of human dignity, I
answer, first, because it raises my homage to God. I understand him no
otherwise than as he is emblemed in the human soul, exalted and
purified: without this creation is a blank to me, and the scripture a
dead letter. Regarding it also as his work, I revere him through his
work, the more profoundly, the more I believe it worthy of him. I cannot
conceive it an honour to God, that the only being here who has capacity
to know him, the only being who reflects his attributes, the only being
who admires his universe and discerns him in it, should be wholly
corrupt: I cannot think that such a doctrine gives him glory. I answer
secondly—because it teaches me to hope for man; teaches me to hope for
him in this world and the next: while I have faith in the capacity, I
can never lose hope in the developement, but if man be powerless as well
as depressed, I have no proper ground for expectation, and the
difficulties of the present are softened by no light from the future.
But as it is, believing that man has great inherent capabilities, for
knowledge, for liberty, for virtue, and for happiness—I lose not my
confidence, I observe him as in the struggle of discipline, and in
preparation for the period of redemption; and wherever I see ignorance,
or slavery, or vice, or misery, I do not despair of a time, when these
heavenly faculties shall have achieved their emancipation. I answer,
lastly, I maintain the doctrine because it teaches me to honour man. I
feel how necessary it is for us in this world of outward show, and where
outward show has so much power, that we should have some strong
sentiment by which to give our appreciation to those who have no
external dazzle with which to attach us: in this world of grades and
inequalities, where rank and wealth, and genius, so continually throw
their enchantments about us, we need a sentiment before which rank and
wealth and genius are nothing, in regarding those who have them not, and
also those who have: and no sentiment can be more powerful, more holy,
or more sublime than this, that they are the immortal children of God,
destined for his presence, and made after his likeness. Having this
faith, then, ignorance, sin, poverty, may come safely before us, without
any fear of that infidel contempt with which they are too often treated.
Show me then a man, and no matter what his condition, if I be true to
this faith, you point me to an object of most solemn interest. Show me
the red man of the American forests, or the black man of tropical
deserts, and untame and ferocious though he be, he has within him an
indelible title to my reverence. His rude and unclothed form enshrines a
soul in the image of God, as well as the most polished of his civilized
brethren. Show me the veriest serf or slave who seems chained to the
soil—the gospel which is equal to bond and free, tells me to behold in
him the heir of a glorious inheritance; his title is his nature; it
burns in his blood, and it is stamped upon his brow, its appeal is in
the fire or moisture of his eye—no power can efface it, for the hand of
God has impressed it:—show me even the criminal who seems all but lost
to every sense of duty, I am not justified in despairing, much less have
I any title to scorn. We dare not despise in the lowest state the child
whom God regards—we dare not cast off whom Christ has not rejected, nor
disown the brother for whom he died. If we be right-minded, and have any
sympathy with the spirit of Jesus, his moral wretchedness should be his
most eloquent appeal. We never know the whole power of Christianity
until we have interest in man as the child of God, and revere him as
God’s image, until we behold the throng around us in relation to their
mighty and improvable capacities—until we see in the lowest and the
worst, objects of hope and moral influence, with undying souls which no
vice or passion should conceal. In this faith the messenger of God may
go with confidence to guilt and suffering, and bring with him no mocking
offers of blessedness and peace: then may he call on souls to rejoice
which were ready to perish in despair, pour the dews of heaven on many a
closing hour, and silence the doubts of many a fearing spirit. Thus,
believing we should have trust unshaken, look forward to the
consummation, when that humanity which here has only its trials, shall
be hallowed with the infinity and eternity of its maker.

NOTES.

Note 1. See page 13.

Having in the Appendix of my former lecture stated from sources of
authority the doctrines of Calvinism on the nature of man, I here
enumerate some of the principal texts on which those doctrines are said
to be founded. The question, it is to be kept in mind, is not whether
man is or is not capable of great depravity, whether sin of various
degrees and extent has not existed in all ages, and does not exist at
present in all places. That sin has entered into the world is a fact
undisputed, no matter when or how; that sin is universal is a point
also, upon which we are on both sides agreed. The true subject of
dispute between us is, simply, this. Is human nature a nature of radical
and inherent depravity? or is not goodness more properly its
characteristic than evil? Now we maintain that all its essential
tendencies establish the latter question in the affirmative, and no
Scriptures prove the former. I shall take those quoted in the most
approved Calvinistic formularies.

Gen. iii. is alleged as giving an account of the origin of sin: “And the
Lord said to the woman, what is this thou hast done? And the woman said,
the serpent beguiled me and I did eat.” There we have the account of
Adam’s temptation and transgression, with the penalties pronounced upon
the beguiler and his dupes. Now in whatever light we regard this
passage, whether as a mythos, an allegory, or a literal narrative, it
implies nothing of the doctrine asserted, or the consequences attributed
to it; namely, the loss of all original righteousness, and entire
defilement in all the faculties and parts of the soul and body: the
imputation of their sin to mankind, burdened with the penalty of eternal
death. When we find these ideas extracted out of one obscure passage, we
may well ask is it Unitarianism or orthodoxy which adds to the
Scriptures? These ideas are not in the passage itself, nor in any other
supposed to be co-relative, nor in any number of passages fairly
conjoined and fairly interpreted.

Gen. vi. 5. “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.”
This states merely a general fact, that of an evil condition of society,
for which judgment of God is represented as poured out from heaven. But
it is alleged, that in the same connection we read “that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually.” This
clause only expresses the original idea with more impressive force. No
one in the worst state of an individual or a nation will attempt to
maintain that such words can have a rigid and literal application.
Besides, in that very time, Noah is made an express exception; for we
read that “the Lord said unto Noah, come thou and all thy house into the
ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.”[522]
But though the literal meaning were insisted on, it could but literally
extend to men of that time; and the rule of interpretation by which our
opponents define the character of man, we are entitled in the next verse
to apply to the character of God. “It _repented_ him,” we are told,
“that he had made man on the earth, and it _grieved_ him at his
heart.”[523] If on the literal principle we are to conclude man wicked
in every thought and imagination, on the same principle we are to
conclude that God can repent, and that he can be grieved at the heart.

Jer. xvii. 9. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked,” is an exaggeration of the same kind with that we are
considering. It was uttered when the Jewish nation was in a state of sad
corruption, and the prophet’s feelings were passionate against his
countrymen in grief and indignation. If we are to take all the prophet’s
words as coolly and deliberately uttered, then what shall we say to the
tremendous language in which he curses his existence and his birth.

Eccl. vii. 29. “God hath made man upright, but they have sought many
inventions.” This expression contains no matter of controversy; the
first part states our view, and the latter clause of the verse, by no
torture of criticism can be made to imply inherent and entire depravity.

Psalm li. 5. “Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me.” The import of this expression is to be judged of from the
general tone of the Psalm, which is most passionate and penetential,
inspired by the deepest spirit of remorse. David uttered these
complainings in profoundest self-accusation; but there would be little
for repentance to deplore, if he could remove the blame from himself to
his nature, and bury individual guilt in a corruption to which he was
subjected in common with all men. The force and meaning—the piercing and
eloquent deprecation of the whole composition, combine to show it is one
of individual experience, the idea of original sin leaves it vapid and
pointless, makes it, not the anguish of a convicted sinner, but the
sophistry of a deluded hypocrite; not a lamentation for vice, but an
excuse for it. These passages are the few which can be found in the Old
Testament that have any direct reference to a tenet said to be
inculcated throughout the whole of Scripture. If we turn to the New
Testament we find the evidence quite as scanty, and quite as
inconclusive. The texts advanced are commonly taken from the epistles,
principally from those of Paul, and of Paul’s, mostly from the Romans.
Few or none can be advanced from the gospel histories, and the
discourses of Christ have no reference to such a doctrine.

Rom. iii. 10. “There is none righteous, no not one: there is none that
understandeth,” &c., &c. Correspondent to this passage is the 14th
Psalm. Both David and Paul refer to the peculiar depravity of their
times. But, in the sense of absolute and guiltless perfection,
unquestionably, the general assertion may be made of all men.

Rom. v. 12-19, and 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 45, 49. The apostle, I apprehend,
institutes a comparison between the imperfect man, symbolized in Adam,
and the perfect man revealed in Christ; between the earthly and the
heavenly, the mortal and the immortal; death shown forth in the one—life
manifested in the other.

Rom. vii. 18. “For I know that in me, (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no
good thing; for to will is present with me, but how to perform that
which is good, I find not.” Ver. 25. “So then with my mind, I serve the
law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.” And the apostle had said
in the preceding verses, “I delight in the law of God after the inward
man; but I find a law in my members warring against the law of my mind,
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members.” This is an eloquent and fervent out-pouring of individual
experience, no more intended as a universal description than any passage
in the journal of John Wesley or Thomas Scott. Involving as human nature
does, a twofold constitution, a struggle between desire and conscience
is a necessary condition of its moral existence. This is inevitable,
unless a being is above or beneath temptation; but the very struggle
implies the power of the moral sense; the possession of the moral sense
is an element of human dignity even in defeat, how much more in triumph.
Without the power of transgression or the danger of falling, there is of
course no trial, and in the human sense no virtue. But there are some
expressions of Paul’s more general and comprehensive, and to these I
shall devote one or two remarks.

Rom. viii. 7. “The carnal mind (τὸ φρονημα τῆς σαρκος—the mind of the
flesh) is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be.”

Gal. v. 17. “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, (Ἡ γὰρ σὰρξ
ἐπιθυμεῖ κατα του πνευματος) and the spirit against the flesh; and these
are contrary the one to the other.” The scriptural use of the word
“flesh” (σαρξ) implies two meanings; first, the excess of the inferior
desires, which is in reality contrary to God, and therefore sin; for
God, though he has implanted these subordinate desires, has subjected
them to certain laws, beyond which they are at variance with his will
and with his providence. In this view the carnal mind is properly at
enmity with God, and is not subject to the law of God. Secondly, the
inferior desires, parenthetically not actually sin, but in general the
causes of sin. When St. Paul says money is the root of all evil, we do
not surely understand him to mean that the pursuit of gain is in all
cases a root of wickedness; for we may conceive innumerable instances in
which the struggle for money is connected with the sublimest of virtues.
We merely conclude that it is a very dangerous desire, and liable to
very dangerous abuses. Under the designation, therefore, of earthly or
fleshly, may be classed three orders of desire—that of gain, that of
pleasure, and that of power. These are essentially evil in themselves or
they are not. If we conclude they are, we must then charge the fault on
God who has given them, or we must become Manachees, and suppose the
existence of two principles, one good, and the other evil; if they are
not, the sin is in their abuse, and not in their existence, and though
the criminal be condemned the nature is absolved. I shall mention but a
very few more texts advanced in favour of this doctrine.

Eph. ii. 1-3. “And you hath he quickened,” &c. A mere description this,
of the age, answerable both to Jews and Gentiles: and to the same
purpose is the passage from the same epistle, (c. ix. v. 18.) “having
the understanding darkened—being alienated from the life of God through
the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their
hearts.” Such is the scriptural evidence for one of the most appalling
and destructive doctrines that ever clouded humanity; a doctrine which
impugns the best and truest affections, and destroys at one fell stroke
the idea of spontaneous virtue,—which is compelled to classify the most
beautiful and most base, if devoid of certain doctrinal distinctions,
under one appellative,—which debases human nature—gives man the vileness
of a slave, but does not honour God with the glory of a sovereign. To
exhort man to have the perfection of an angel, and to tell him he has
the nature of a fiend, to tell him that he is “utterly indisposed,
disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all
evil,” amidst absurd pranks of theology, is surely the most absurd. And
between believing this, or rejecting it, the only alternative left us,
is to be at one side or the other of the gulf which separated Lazarus
from Abraham.

See Drummond’s excellent Essay on Original Sin, and a very admirable
tract on the same subject, by the late Dr. Cogan, entitled “A Layman’s
Letters to Mr. Wilberforce.”

Note 2. See page 19.

There is no writer in modern times to whom we owe so much for a true and
elevated Philosophy on Human nature as to Bishop Butler, the most
profound and accurate analyst of the moral faculties of man that has
ever illustrated the principles of Christian ethics. He was not a man to
take wholesale assertions; he subjected our moral nature to the exact
and rigid test of philosophical anatomy, and one deliberate sentence of
his, is worth ten thousand disquisitions from traditional theologians,
who, parrot-like, repeat and repeat again the jargon, that has grown as
stale from mouth to mouth, as the starling’s “let me out, let me
out”—many of whom have no other reason than that they have heard it so
cried out before them. Bishop Butler has examined human nature, and he
has given testimony in its favour—he has vindicated its dignity, and he
has by a deep philosophy, which seemed to be little comprehended by
those who would debase humanity demonstrated its essential excellence.
He has proved by irrefutable arguments, its natural disinterestedness,
its goodness, its necessary conformity with truth and virtue. These are
to be sure but its general tendencies, with many exceptions—yet, why
such a line of argument should be deemed insufficient in moral
philosophy, and be admitted as cogent in natural theology, it is
difficult to conceive.—Take for instance—in the body the case of the eye
or the ear: no one questions, that the eye is admirably adapted for
seeing, and the ear for hearing; and though the one may grow dim or the
other become deaf, it is never asserted that the constitution or nature
of each—on the whole—is contradictory to that for which it was intended.
There are, it is true, various evil manifestations in human nature; but
there are others good—at least, in _seeming_. Cynical Philosophers and
Calvinistic Theologians concur in making the evil substantial, and the
good factitious. The answer which this profound reasoner gives to the
philosophical opponents of human nature will be a sufficient reply to
both. “Suppose,” he says, “a man of learning to be writing a grave book
upon human nature—and to show in several parts of it, that he had an
insight into the subject he was considering. Amongst other things the
following one would require to be accounted for; the appearance of
benevolence or good-will in men towards each other in the instances of
natural relation and in others. Cautious of being deceived with outward
show, he retires within himself, to see exactly what that is in the mind
of man from whence this appearance proceeds; and upon deep reflection
asserts the principle in the mind to be only the love of power and
delight in the exercise of it. Would not everybody think here was a
mistake of one word for another? That the philosopher was contemplating
and accounting for some other human actions, some other behaviour of man
to man? And could any one be thoroughly satisfied, that what is commonly
called benevolence or good-will was really the affection meant, but only
by being made to understand that this learned person had a general
hypothesis, to which the appearance of good-will could no otherwise be
reconciled? That what has this appearance is often nothing but ambition;
that delight in superiority—often (suppose always) mixes itself with
benevolence, only makes it more specious to call it ambition than hunger
of the two; but in reality that passion does no more account for the
whole appearances of good-will, than this appetite does. Is there not
often the appearance of one man’s wishing that good to another, which he
knows himself unable to procure him; and rejoicing in it, though
procured by a third person? And, can love of power any way possibly come
into account for this desire or delight? Is there not often the
appearance of men’s distinguishing between two or more persons,
preferring one before another, to do good to, in cases where the love of
power cannot in the least account for the distinction or preference? For
this principle can no otherwise distinguish between objects, than as it
is a greater instance and exertion of power to do good to one rather
than to another. Again, suppose good-will in the mind of man be nothing
but delight in the exercise of power; men might indeed be restrained by
distant and accidental considerations, but these restraints being
removed, they would have a disposition to, and a delight in mischief as
an exercise and proof of power; and this disposition and delight would
arise from the same principle in the mind, as a disposition to, and a
delight in charity. Thus cruelty as distinct from resentment, would be
exactly the same in the mind of man as good-will; that one tends to the
happiness, the other to the misery of our fellow-creatures, is, it
seems, merely an accidental circumstance, which the mind has not the
least regard to. These are absurdities which even men of capacity run
into, when they have occasion to belie their nature; and will perversely
disclaim that image of God which was originally stamped upon it: the
traces of which, however faint, are plainly discernible upon the mind of
man.” Many passages might be quoted from this great writer in
vindication of humanity, but I shall adduce but one other: it is from
the same discourse, (The first sermon on Human Nature,) as that I have
already extracted—and much to the same purpose. “Mankind,” he says,
“have ungoverned passions, which they will gratify at any rate, as well
to the injury of others as in contradiction to known private interests,
but as there is no such thing as self-hatred, so neither is there any
such thing as ill-will in one man towards another, emulation or
resentment being away: whereas there is plainly benevolence or
good-will: there is no such thing as love of injustice, oppression,
treachery, ingratitude; but only eager desire after such and such
external goods, which, according to a very ancient observation, the most
abandoned would choose to obtain by innocent means, if they were as easy
and effectual to their end: even emulation and resentment by any who
will consider what these passions really are in nature, will be found
nothing to the purpose of this objection, and the principles and
passions in the mind of man which are distinct both from self-love and
benevolence, primarily and most directly lead to right behaviour with
regard to others as well as to himself, and only secondarily and
accidentally to what is evil. Thus though men to avoid the shame of one
villany are often guilty of a greater, yet it is easy to see that the
original tendency of shame is to prevent the doing of shameful actions;
and its leading men to conceal such actions when done, is only the
consequence of their being done, that is, of the passions not having
answered its first end.”—(See also the acute and original Essay of Mr.
Hazlitt’s, on The Principles of Human Actions, in which the leading idea
of Butler’s Philosophy is rigidly examined and illustrated.)

* * * * *

Pascal vindicates the dignity of Human nature in some of his most
beautiful thoughts. Those who are acquainted with the theology of Pascal
(and who are not?) will scarcely suspect him of leaning too partially to
the brighter side of our nature. I quote a few passages from his
writings, as much for the pleasure of copying them, as for the support
they afford to my general argument.

“L’homme est si grand,” he observes, “que, sa grandeur parait même en ce
qu’il se connaît misérable. Un arbre ne se connaît pas misérable: il est
vrai que c’est être misérable que de se connaître, qu’on misérable; mais
aussi c’est grand que de connaître qu’on est misérable. Ainsi toutes
misères prouvent sa grandeur:—ce sont miseres de grand seigneur, miseres
d’un roi dépossédé.

“Nous avons si grande idée de l’ame de l’homme que nous ne pouvons
souffrir d’en être méprisé, et d’ n’être pas dans l’esteme d’une âme: et
toute la félicité des hommes consiste dans cette estime.

“Si d’un côté cette fausse gloire que les hommes cherchent est une
grande marque de leur misère et de leur bassesse, c’en une aussi de leur
excellence; car quelque possessions qu’il ait sur la terre, de quelque
santé et commodité essentielle qu’il jouisse il n’est pas satisfait,
s’il n’est pas dans l’estime des hommes. Il estime si grande la raison
de l’homme que quelque avantage, qu’il ait dans le monde, il se croit
malheureux s’il n’est placé aussi avantegeusement dans la raison de
l’homme c’est la plus belle place du monde: rien ne peut le détourner de
ce désir, et c’est la qualité la plus ineffacable du cœur de l’homme:
jusque-là que ceux que méprisent le plus les hommes, et qui les égalent
aux bêtes veulent encore en être admirés, et contradisent á eux-mêmes
par leur propre sentiment: la nature, qui est plus puisante que toute
leur raison, les convainquant plus fortement de la grandeur de l’homme
que la raison ne les convainc de sa baissesse.”—“L’homme n’est qu’un
roseau le plus faíble de la nature; mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne
faut pas que l’univers entier s’arme pour l’écraser. Une vapeur, une
goutte d’eau suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l’univers l’écraserait,
l’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu’il sait
qu’il meurt, et l’avantage que l’univers a sur lui, l’univers n’en sait
rien. Ainsi toute notre dignité consiste dans la pensée c’est de la
qu’il faut nous relever, non de l’espace et de la durée.” “Il est
dangereux de trop voir l’homme combien il est égal aux bêtes sans lui
montrer sa grandeur. Il est encore dangereux de lui fair trop voir sa
grandeur sans sa bassesse. Il est plus dangereux de lui laisser ignorer
l’un et l’autre: mais est tres avantegeux de lui representer l’un et
l’autre.” (Pensées de Pascal.)

I have adduced the testimony of Bishop Butler as to the soundness of our
views on human nature: I shall here transcribe a few passages from a
writer, in whose language a kindred philosophy becomes most eloquent and
inspiring—I mean Doctor Channing.—“I repeat it,” he says, “showing the
moral power of faith in the divine capacities of man, to resemble our
Maker we need not quarrel with our nature or our lot. Our present state,
made up as it is, of aids and trials, is worthy of God, and may be used
throughout to assimilate us to him. For example: our domestic ties, the
relations of neighbourhood and country, the daily interchanges of
thoughts and feelings, the daily occasions of kindness, the daily claims
of want and suffering, these and other circumstances of our social
state, form the best sphere and school for that benevolence which is
God’s brightest attribute; and we should make a sad exchange by
substituting for these natural aids any self-invented artificial means
of sanctity. Christianity, our great guide to God, never leads us away
from the path of nature, and never wars with the unsophisticated
dictates of conscience. We approach our Creator by every right exercise
of the powers he gives us. Whenever we invigorate the understanding by
honestly and resolutely seeking truth, and by withstanding whatever
might warp the judgment; whenever we invigorate the conscience by
following it in opposition to the passions; whenever we receive a
blessing gratefully, bear a trial patiently, or encounter peril or scorn
with moral courage; whenever we perform a disinterested deed; whenever
we lift up the heart in true adoration to God; whenever we war against a
habit or desire which is strengthening itself against our higher
principles; whenever we think, speak or act with moral energy, and
devotion to duty, be the occasion ever so humble or familiar; then the
divinity is growing within us, and we are ascending towards our Author.
The religion thus blends with common life. We thus draw nigh to God
without forsaking men. We are thus without parting with our human
nature, to clothe ourselves with the divine.” (Discourse at the
ordination of the Rev. F. A. Farley.) Honour is due to all men on the
ground of the worth and dignity of their nature, and of this the
eloquent writer shows Christianity a proof and an illustration. “The
whole of this religion is a testimony to the worth of man in the sight
of God—to the importance of human nature—to the infinite purposes for
which we were framed. God is there set forth as sending, to the succour
of his human family, his beloved Son, the bright image and
representative of his own perfections; and sending him, not simply to
roll away a burden of pain and punishment, (for this, however magnified
in systems of theology is not his highest work) but to create man after
that divine image which he himself bears, to purify the soul from every
stain, to communicate to it new power over evil, and to open before it
immortality as its aim and destination—immortality by which we are to
understand, not merely a perpetual, but an ever-improving and celestial
being. Such are the views of Christianity. And these blessings it
proffers, not to a few, not to the educated, not to the eminent, but to
all human beings, to the poorest and the most fallen; and we know that
through the power of its promises, it has, in not a few instances,
raised the fallen to true greatness, and given them in their present
virtue and peace, an earnest of the heaven which it unfolds. Such is
Christianity. Men viewed in the light of this religion, are beings cared
for by God, to whom he has given his Son, on whom he pours forth his
spirit; and whom he has created for the highest good in the universe,
the participation of his own perfections and happiness. Such is
Christianity. Our scepticism in our own nature cannot quench the bright
light which religion sheds on the soul and on the prospects of mankind;
and just so far as we receive its truth we shall honour all men.”
(Discourse on “Honour due to All Men.”)

“Theologians,” remarks a powerful writer, “say, that the very infant
comes into the world under the wrath and curse of the Deity. They never
learned that by observing the glory of God in the face of Christ. No
such withering frown ever sat on his benignant countenance. Think of
Christ’s wrath with a child! Think of Christ cursing a child! I must
read in the Gospel that he did so, before I believe that God does so,
and that the Calvinistic doctrine of original sin is true. In the strong
horror of the human heart at the monstrous combination of such a person
with such an action, I read the condemnation of that gloomiest article
of a gloomy creed; and if it be a foul calumny on Christ, it must,
exalted as he was, be a yet fouler calumny on God. I would sooner
believe the one than the other. I would sooner imagine some Jesus of
Nazareth encountering some fond father and fonder mother, in the first
freshness of their parental feelings, as they pass beneath ‘the gate of
the temple which was called the Beautiful;’ less beautiful in the
sculptured forms of marble on which its gorgeous architecture rested
than in the living human group which were there bearing the babe to the
altar to dedicate it to the God of its fathers; and encountering them
with that solemn malediction which would sink into their souls and
corrode their lives; than I would imagine Omniscience, which witnesses
each man’s birth, life, and death, to be in all earth’s scenes of
parental anxiousness and fondness over helpless infancy, the
all-pervading presence of an Almighty curse. Yet this is the doctrine
into which thousands upon thousands of children are catechised. Why will
not parents and teachers lead them, not to Calvin, but to Christ? So
should they receive a blessing, even as did those children,
notwithstanding that there were not wanting, even then, erring disciples
to intercept their approach and forbid their coming. As his blessing was
on them, so is that of his and our God. His doctrine, his conduct.
‘Their angels,’ he says, ‘do always behold the face of my Father which
is in heaven;’ they are the peculiar objects of the providential care
which, by the number, and swiftness, and power of those supposed winged
messengers, was pictorial typified; and again, ‘Suffer little children,
and forbid them not, to come to me, for of such is the kingdom of
heaven!’”—_Christ and Christianity_, a series of Sermons, by the Rev. W.
J. Fox: which for energy of thought, richness and beauty of imagery,
truth of moral analysis and description, force and eloquence of
language, may be placed in the very highest class of pulpit oratory, and
even in that class be ranged with its rarest specimens. The taint of
heresy has robbed them of their due fame, for in those days, without the
proper admixture of orthodoxy, logic only beats the air, and eloquence
speaks to the deaf adder that will not hear the voice of the charmer,
charm he never so sweetly.

I quote with great pleasure one or two passages from Mr. Dewey, as
illustrative of our common doctrine on human nature:

“The theologian says that human nature is bad and corrupt. Now taking
this language in the practical and popular sense, I find no difficulty
in agreeing with the theologian. And indeed, if he would confine
himself—leaving vague and general declamation and technical
phraseology—if he would confine himself to facts; if he would confine
himself to a description of actual bad qualities and dispositions in
men, I think he could not well go too far. Nay more, I am not certain
that any theologian’s description, so far as it is of this nature, has
gone deep enough into the frightful mass of human depravity. For it
requires an acute perception that is rarely possessed, and a higher and
holier conscience, perhaps than belongs to any, to discover and declare
_how_ bad, and degraded, and unworthy a being _a bad man_ is. I confess
that nothing would beget in me a higher respect for man, a real—not a
theological and factitious—but a real and deep sense of human sinfulness
and unworthiness—of the mighty wrong which man does to himself, to his
religion, and his God, when he yields to the evil and accursed
inclinations that find place in him. This moral indignation is not half
strong enough in those who profess to talk the most about human
depravity. And the objection to them is, not that they feel too much or
speak too strongly, the actual wickedness, the actual and distinct sins
of the wicked; but they speak too vaguely and generally of human
wickedness; that they speak with too little discrimination to every man
as if he were a murderer or a monster; that they speak, in fine, too
argumentatively, and too much (if I may say so) with a sort of
argumentative satisfaction, as if they were glad that they could make
this point so strong.”

The next extract is in advocacy of human nature, eloquently pleading for
it in a low and guilty condition.

“The very pirate that dyes the ocean wave with the blood of his
fellow-beings; that meets his defenceless victims in some lonely sea
where no cry for help can be heard, and plunges his dagger to the heart
that is pleading for life, which is calling upon him by all means of
kindred, of children, and of home, to spare—yes, the very pirate is such
a man as you or I might have been. Orphanage and childhood; an
unfriended youth; an evil companion; a resort to sinful pleasure;
familiarity with vice; a scorned and blighted name; seared and crushed
affections; desperate fortunes—these are the steps that might have led
any one amongst us to unfurl on the high seas the bloody flag of
universal defiance; to have waged war with our kind; to have put on the
terrific attributes; to have done the dreadful deeds; and to have died
the awful death of the ocean robber. How many affecting relationships of
humanity plead with us to pity him! That head that is doomed to pay the
price of blood once rested upon a mother’s bosom. The hand that did that
accursed work, and shall soon be stretched cold and nerveless in the
felon’s grave, was once taken and cherished by a father’s hand, and led
in the ways of sportive childhood and innocent pleasure. The dreaded
monster of crime has once been the object of sisterly love and all
domestic endearment. Pity him, then. Pity his blighted hope and his
crushed heart. It is a wholesome sensibility, it is meet for frail and
sinning creatures like us to cherish. It forgoes no moral
discrimination. It feels the crime, but feels it as a weak, tempted, and
rescued creature should. It imitates the great Master; and looks with
indignation upon the offender, and yet is grieved for him.”—_Dewey._

_Additional Remarks, &c._

“Our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Mr. Buddicom, “hath solemnly and
emphatically said, ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,
but that believeth not shall be damned.’” (Yes, but is this to believe
what our opponents tell us, and to be baptized into the faith of
Athanasius?) “Unitarians,” he continues, “assert that they fulfil the
requirement, and therefore are safe from the penalty. We, on the other
hand, are assured, that as it would be treason against the sovereign of
these realms, to acknowledge her claim only to a part of her dominions,
while her royalty over the remainder was utterly denied; so the
Unitarian scheme which would give unto the Saviour the honours of a
prophet and a witness, while it would unsphere him from that full-orbed
glory wherein He shines through the revelation of his grace, is treason
against him and against the Majesty of God, who willeth ‘that all men
should honour the son, even as they honour the father.’ Thus convinced,
we deem the professors of that system to be under sentence of spiritual
outlawry, which if it be not reversed, will end in the terrors of the
second death.”—Lect. 8. pp. 438, 439.

The tone in which we have often been spoken of in this controversy
appears to assume that we in some degree doubt the sincerity or charity
of our opponents. We deny them neither. We know the history of religion
well enough to be aware that as severe things have been done in
sincerity as to pronounce that men dishonour Christ and God, that they
are under sentence of spiritual outlawry, and if they repent not (_i.e._
do not turn to the opinion of their antagonists) shall surely endure the
second death; we can easily believe that men say these things sincerely;
for except from the necessity of conviction, we do not imagine they
would reiterate perdition and denunciation as often as they do. We deny
not the sincerity in which an opponent may hold an opinion or resist
one: but though the motive may not be impeachable, the quality of the
opinion itself may be in the last degree anti-social and pernicious. The
men who built the Inquisition did it in perfect sincerity: the men who
sat on its judgment-seats were for the most part sincere, so were those
who dragged the heretic from his home to the dungeon, and from the
dungeon to the stake. And so are those who tell us that our faith is
damnable. Men may on account of belief consign antagonists to hell-fire
for eternity; but unless the evidence be most clear, to pronounce the
judgment requires a goodly quantity of courage. As little willing are we
to refuse our opponents the charity they claim, if by that be meant a
desire to promote good in their idea of it: but we may very fairly doubt
the justness of that idea. Believing that heretics, such as we, are in
the way to eternal destruction, it is neither inconsistent with candour
or charity to tell us so, in the hope of reclaiming us; and if
theologians imagined that inflicting bodily suffering might have a
similar effect, we are compelled to admit them to the same merit. The
worst effect of harsh and austere doctrines is that they produce harsh
and austere feelings; and the professors of them, under their indurating
process, can do deeds from principle which even bad men would rarely do
from passion. One perverted motive is worse than a thousand evil
actions. Charity in her own native sweetness is meek and gentle as the
dove, and yet theology has often made her ravenous as the vulture;
charity as she came from heaven marked her way in tears of mercy, but
theology could so pervert her as to cause her wade to the lips in blood.
The charity of the heart is very different from the charity of creeds;
and when we hear English clergymen condemn the Romish Church as
uncharitable, we naturally ask on what ground? Is it because she
condemned heretics? So do you. Is it because she has a wrong test of
heresy? Her test is substantially the same as your own. You assume that
we do not believe in Christ, because we do not believe in your creed:
she assumes that you do not believe in Christ because you do not believe
in her councils: you denounce eternal torments on us for want of your
faith; and she delivers you to the same destiny for want of her faith:
the tabooed ground of heresy and orthodoxy may be circumscribed or
extensive—the points may be few or many, the principle is the same, or
if there be any difference, it is but breaking the big end or the little
end of the egg. We are accused as traitors against God and Christ, and
to make the indictment clear against us, it is illustrated by the
instance of rebellion against a sovereign. This is a heavy charge, but
one both unjust and false. It is evil intention that constitutes crime:
a traitor opposes his sovereign and _intends_ his dethronement; but
though we should even _mistake_ the nature of Christ, can any one who
thinks for a moment venture to say our intention is for his
dethronement? Let us suppose the case, no uncommon one, of an Eastern
monarch who should disguise himself, and that some of his subjects
failed, in their ignorance of his rank, to pay him the customary
honours; what should we think of his justice, if he should call this
treason, and impale the wretches who were unconscious of having offended
him. It is too monstrous even for Eastern despotism. Or take the case in
our own history; what should we think of Alfred’s rectitude and
clemency, if when he ascended the throne from his poverty, he should
have thrown the shepherd’s wife into a dungeon and chains, because, in
his disguise, she uttered against him a surly rebuke. The instance is
not entirely parallel, but the analogy goes far enough for my purpose.
Now, though Christ were in reality the Deity which orthodoxy proclaims
him, the circumstances of his earthly life, and the concealment of his
infinite nature, were certainly sufficient to excuse some in ignorance
for taking him to be that which he appeared; and to punish them for so
natural an error, would not be a vindication of majesty, but a
capricious exhibition of cruelty.

The legal and political mode of illustration is a favourite with the
reverend lecturer. P. 450, we have a quotation from Blackstone, and the
distinction very admirably elucidated of private wrongs and public
wrongs, civil injuries, crimes and misdemeanours, &c. Sir William
Blackstone never, I imagine, anticipated the honour that his
Commentaries would be used to illustrate the principles of the divine
government; and one of the last ideas, I apprehend, that entered his
brain in delivering his lectures, was, that he was giving expositions on
the ways of Providence. The Preacher in the order of illustration, gave
a passing blow “at those wretched and guilty disturbers of the public
peace in one of our own colonies who lately crossed the borders of a
friendly state to slay and ruin and destroy, under the name of
_sympathizers_.” An allusion, doubtless, extremely loyal; but in the
present case not very logical. (Lect. p. 452.) In this part of the
discourse we have other distinctions, showing that man is a public
offender, that God is not a person but a sovereign, in relation to
guilty man, and that a sovereign is different from a person; that God is
not a creditor but a judge, and that a judge is different from a
creditor. All this may be very acute, very legal, but, theologically, it
has one imperfection, that of mistaking entirely the relation between
God and man, of turning false analogies into false premises, and, of
course, deducing from them false conclusions: of properly having nothing
to do with the true matter in hand, and leaving the question precisely
where it was before. “Our opponents,” says the Preacher, “assert that
sins are to be regarded as _debts_, and as _debts_ only.” We assert no
such thing, have never asserted it, but all the contrary, and to such an
idea the whole tone of our argument and of our system is in most perfect
contradiction. We have no such low view of God as to think that man
could owe him anything, nor any such presumptuous view of man as to
imagine he could make payment to his God. Yet upon this poor assumption
whole pages of declamation are wasted, for if it serves any purpose it
is but to beat down the man of straw which the lecturer himself had
fashioned. We hold no such view, and therefore we have never defended
any such. We do our best to maintain what we assert; if others assert
doctrines for us, we leave them the pleasure of the refutation; although
it is only when men invent opinions for opponents that they have the
double enjoyment of first building up and then pulling down. We do not
regard sins as debts for which payment can be made to God; but we may
fairly assert that on this principle rests the whole scheme of
orthodoxy. What are the atonement and righteousness of Christ but a
payment or equivalent to God for the salvation of the elect?—the very
nature of the system implies this idea, and in truth it is the only idea
that gives it even the appearance of consistency; for crime as such
cannot be punished in the person of another, but a debt can be fairly
paid by the money of another. If I commit high treason against the
sovereign—to borrow an analogy from the Preacher—it would be sad work to
lay the head of some one else on the block for it—but if I owe a severe
creditor a thousand pounds, a rich and generous friend may pay it in my
stead, and no social principle is violated by the substitute.

Mr. Buddicom makes the following modest apology for the presumed
infallibility of himself and brethren, and their right to attack all
heretical deniers of it. “While, however,” he observes, “we are prepared
to contend for the lawfulness and duty of an affectionate inroad upon
the regions of spiritual error, we remember that our movement is not
purely and primarily aggressive. A volume of Lectures, preached
expressly on the controverted doctrines of Christianity (as the lecturer
denominated his subjects), in a chapel now occupied by one of our
respected opponents, has been before the world. In these and other
similar measures, the fortress of true Christianity, the only safe
munition of rocks for the souls of men, hath been attacked by mine, and
sap, and open assault. And shall there be no attempt to countermine, no
sally made, no arm raised, in a forward movement for the truth as it is
in Jesus? Our regret is rather due to the culpable silence of the past,
than to the proceeding of the present time.” (Lect. p. 440.) The
reverend and respected Preacher refers to a volume of Lectures, by the
Rev. George Harris, delivered in this town some years ago: those
Lectures, unfortunately, I do not possess; but I have read them with
much pleasure, and many passages of them I should wish to quote in
support of my own general arguments. But the Lecturer greatly mistakes
if he imagines that we complain of orthodox aggression. Controversy,
political and religious, is the fair expression of civilised and
progressive opinion. We do not blame those who oppose us,—we have never
done it,—we have not complained that war was made on us, but we did most
righteously complain that the fair laws of warfare were denied us. Our
people were invited to go to Christ Church to listen to wise and learned
men, to be converted, by hearing their religion spoken of as blasphemy
and outlawry—to hear _themselves_ designated as enemies to their God,
and dethroners of their Saviour, and the spiritual slayers of their
kind. They were denied any religious equality. They were abused, and
vituperated, and denounced; but they were not listened to—their
condemnation was sternly uttered—but their defence had not even the poor
tribute of a hearing. Nay, grave clergymen pleaded that they could not
have their religious sensibilities disturbed or hurt by Unitarian
roughness, as if manly controversialists were to shrink from opposition
with the fastidious delicacy of timid devotees. We neither complained of
controversy, nor avoided it; on the contrary, we met it promptly,
sincerely, and willingly—with ability, it is possible, inferior to our
opponents—but not with less zeal, less alacrity, or less honesty. When
our respected opponents challenged our attendance, it was not as
antagonists on the opposite sides of a subject open to discussion, but
as accused to give in their confession of repentance, or as criminals to
hear their last sentence of punishment. We, however, blame not the
Lecturer, nor his party—we rather agree with him and them. We have
received a lesson which we needed; Unitarians have stood too long on the
defensive, when they should have been on the aggressive: had they been
faithful to their trust, it may be that the degrading dogma of original
sin, and the atrocious doctrines of election and reprobation could not
now, in this country, be matters of dispute. “Our regret (to use the
words of the Lecturer) is rather due to the culpable silence of the past
than to the proceedings of the present time.” It is a remarkable fact in
the history of religion, that all the doctrines which have been most
generally condemned as heresy, have been pure or benignant ones; and all
persecutions and religious hatreds, bodily or social, have been directed
against their professors. Not to mention the Christians, who burned
Jerome and Huss; we might refer even to the heathens who poisoned
Socrates—to uphold the personality of Satan—the reality of his
existence, and the malignity of his nature,—to declaim upon hell’s
torments and to announce eternal perdition on the great mass of God’s
family—to create excitement by the grossest pictures of vice and misery
is the certain way to popularity. The popular taste, as it has yet been
developed or nurtured, has been coarse and ferocious, and if any thing
could prove to me the doctrine of universal depravity, it would be the
toleration of the horrors of Calvinistic orthodoxy.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture VIII.

Footnote 518:

Gen. ix. 6.

Footnote 519:

See Appendix, Note 1.

Footnote 520:

Pref. to Sermons.

Footnote 521:

See Note 2.

Footnote 522:

Gen. vii. 1.

Footnote 523:

Gen. vi. 6.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PREFACE.

In preparing this Lecture for the press, after an examination in its
printed form of that to which it is a Reply, I do not find that the
Trinitarian argument has been strengthened by additional evidence, or by
a more logical statement, so as to require any modification of my
impressions of its weight and character.

Mr. Bates has in his Appendix _drawn out_ some of his scriptural
evidence, and I can only require any one to examine it, in order not
only to estimate its cogency in reference to this particular question,
but also to obtain a very accurate idea of the peculiar genius of
Trinitarian interpretation. I shall select two passages as perfectly
descriptive of the manner in which the believer in a verbal and logical
revelation draws doctrinal conclusions from the mere words of scripture.

Here is one of the Trinitarian _Scriptural proofs_ of Three Persons in
the Unity of the Godhead.

“2 Thess. iii. 5. ‘The LORD direct your hearts into the love of GOD, and
into the patient waiting for CHRIST.’

“In these passages the Three Persons are distinguished. The LORD to whom
the prayer is in both instances directed; GOD, _even our Father_; and
our _Lord Jesus_ CHRIST. That the LORD thus distinguished from _God the
Father_, and our _Lord Jesus Christ_, and addressed in prayer, is the
HOLY GHOST, is evident from the analogy of Scripture, which teaches that
_sanctification_, for which the Apostle prays, is the peculiar work of
the Holy Ghost.”—_Mr. Bates’ Appendix, p. 590._

Now, using the same description of logic, we have only to quote a
passage in which _sanctification_ is ascribed _not_ to the Holy Ghost,
but to GOD our FATHER, in order to overthrow the whole of this verbal
and mournful trifling with the sublime and vast purport of revelation.

“Holy FATHER, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me,
that _they_ may be one, _as_ we are.... _Sanctify_ them through thy
truth: thy word is truth.”—John xvii. 11, 17.

The second descriptive specimen I select, of the genius of Trinitarian
interpretation, is the following alleged _scriptural proof_ of the
separate Deity and Personality of the Holy Spirit.

“Rev. i. 4. ‘JOHN to the seven Churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto
you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come;
and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne.’”

The _seven_ Spirits, we are told, is a symbolical designation of the One
Spirit. Nothing however can be more clear, even on the _verbal_
principle, than that the seven Spirits are the seven Messengers, Angels,
or Ministers, which, partaking themselves of God’s Spirit, were His
instruments of communication with the seven Churches of Asia enumerated
by the Author of the Apocalypse, and which are represented as being
before his throne, deriving their own inspiration from Him.—“The mystery
of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven
golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven
Churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven
Churches.”—Rev. i. 20.

On this, the last opportunity, perhaps, which I may have, of saying any
thing in connexion with these Lectures, I cannot but express my own
regret, and point it out to public notice, that we have been
necessitated by circumstances, not to prepare merely and deliver as
pulpit addresses, but to print and fix in a permanent form,
dissertations upon most important and agitated questions, within a
period of time altogether insufficient to do any justice, I will not say
to the subjects, but even to our own ideas of the subjects. The
accidental advantage, in this respect, obtained by the Lecturers on the
Trinitarian Theology, with ample time and undivided strength to bring
out a single Lecture on a single topic, ought to be included as an
element of judgment, if the real value of the contrasted views is to be
estimated by any, by the results of the present controversy. For myself,
it is with great pain that I think of so much written, in the most
sacred cause, almost extempore. That this necessity has occasioned any
defects except such as have been _an injury to our own views of Truth_,
by failing to bring out its full strength, I am not aware. I am not
aware that, in any respect, we have, through haste, _overstated_ our
case. I am aware, for my own part, that it might have been much
strengthened by additional force of evidence, and clearness of
statement. I may be allowed to state, that in the course of three months
I have been obliged to write and print to the extent of an octavo volume
of nearly four hundred pages. It is impossible that such an exposition
of our views should not be crowded with imperfections, and indefinitely
feebler than it might be. May we ask that this consideration will be
taken into the account by all those who are now forming an opinion of
the merits of the Trinitarian and Unitarian Theology, from this
discussion of it. May we ask those who, in the love of the Truth, and in
confidence in the God of Truth that no Truth can injure them, wish the
real evidence to be presented to their minds, to read the original
sources, the New and the Old Scriptures, afresh, without fear, without
an unfair and biassing horror of what they have been cradled to dread as
heresy, without the intellectual infidelity of studying a revelation
from God with the previous interpretations of men, colouring all their
associations with the very words of the document, and preventing their
ever receiving a pure impression from the original evidence unmixed with
the whispers and suggestions of some self-authorized _Interpreter_ who
is in terror lest they should miss _the essentials_ of the _revealed_
religion, and derive from it some ideas that would destroy.

_Liverpool, April 1839._

---------------------

LECTURE IX.

THE COMFORTER, EVEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH,
WHO DWELLETH IN US, AND TEACHETH ALL THINGS.

By REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.

“IF YE LOVE ME, KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS: AND I WILL PRAY THE FATHER, AND
HE SHALL GIVE YOU ANOTHER COMFORTER, THAT HE MAY ABIDE WITH YOU FOR
EVER; EVEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH; WHOM THE WORLD CANNOT RECEIVE,
BECAUSE IT SEETH HIM NOT, NEITHER KNOWETH HIM: BUT YE KNOW HIM, FOR
HE DWELLETH WITH YOU, AND SHALL BE IN YOU. I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU
COMFORTLESS; I WILL COME TO YOU.”—_John_ xiv. 15-18

It is very remarkable that whenever the doctrine of the Trinity is
discussed, the debate is almost always exclusively occupied by the
single question of the deity of the Christ, and if that can be
established, the controversy is considered at an end. Controversialists
glide from the doctrine of the deity of the Son to the separate deity of
the Holy Spirit, in a way which plainly shows that one inroad being
effected on the personal unity of God, and the principle once loosened,
another division of it is conceded upon much easier terms, without fear,
without caution, without reverence. Why indeed should men scruple to
admit three persons into the unity of the Godhead after having got over
the first great difficulty of admitting two? A third person adds nothing
to the difficulty of a second person, and if we cannot maintain unbroken
the principle of one God, in our own sense of oneness, then the extent
to which the principle is violated, whether by three persons, or any
other number, is really a matter of a very minor importance. Having
admitted that there may be two persons in the godhead, it would be very
absurd to take an objection against there being three; for the analogy
of unity, in the only sense we are acquainted with it, the unity of a
human being, having once failed us, we must never plead it again. The
principle that admits two minds in the being of one God will equally
admit any number whatever, provided Scripture accords to them the
dignity, and our struggle and reluctance will be felt most strongly on
the first of these invasions of our own idea of unity, and will yield
more and more readily at each successive one.

This is the only explanation I can conceive, and a very natural one it
is, of the weak and unguarded state in which Trinitarians have left the
separate personality and deity of the Holy Ghost. I do not wonder at
their preference for that word, _Ghost_, in this connection. It
materializes the word Spirit, puts the true idea out of immediate sight,
and is so far a preparation for introducing the conception of a third
_person_, which never would naturally have arisen from the use of the
more intelligible expression “the Holy Spirit,” “the Spirit of God.” I
apprehend that all minds, though long familiarized with the idea of a
plurality of persons in the godhead, would be greatly shocked, if that
plurality was conceived to be either more or less than the mystic number
three. A multitude of deities, discharging different offices, but
partaking of the one Essence of the godhead, would be thought a
completely Heathen conception—and a reduction of the present orthodox
idea, so as to represent only two persons in the one God, would strike a
Christian mind as scarcely less pagan. Yet upon Trinitarian principles
this is evidently a mere prejudice of Custom. There is no more reason,
so far as our understanding is concerned, for there being three persons
in the godhead than for there being only two, and whether there be one,
two, three, or a countless number, is a question to which our Reason
ought to be entirely indifferent, having no _a priori_ opinion or
principle of its own upon the subject: and submitting to the letter of
the Revelation with equal readiness, whether it distributes the Essence
of the Deity among a Trinity, or among any other plurality of minds. Now
I would ask Trinitarians whether they have schooled themselves into
submission to this principle—whether they would receive four persons in
the Godhead as readily as they receive three, provided the same mode of
inferential interpretation which now establishes the Trinity, succeeded
in showing that a further distribution of the essence of the godhead was
required, in order to make our Theology consistent with the exact
wording of the Scriptures. I apprehend that most minds amongst us would
revolt at the idea of four persons in one God, _contemplated as a mere
possibility_. Yet surely in a Trinitarian this would be very
unreasonable. As a _Scripture_ doctrine he might reasonably discard it
as unfounded—but as a possibility, as a subject on which, previous to
Revelation, he ought to have no prejudice whatever, he must on his own
principles have no objection to the plurality of divine persons
extending to any number, and be as prompt, to submit his faith to five
as to three, provided five can be shown to be the proper inference from
the words of Scripture. A consistent Trinitarian must feel no _a priori_
objection to any number of divine persons united together. Having
conceded that on this subject his Reason is no guide, and his Nature no
analogy, there is but one question he has a right to ask,—“Is it so
written?”

And even if it should be granted that Scripture reveals three divine
persons and reveals no more, yet upon his own principles, a consistent
Trinitarian should be cautious in asserting that there _are_ no more.
Scripture nowhere asserts that there are _only_ three persons in the
godhead—and surely it is being wise above what is written, for a
Trinitarian to confine God’s essence within the limits in which He has
been pleased to reveal Himself, and to make the communications He has
opened upon us the measures of the infinite possibilities of His being.
A Trinitarian reverently and with becoming modesty stating his own
doctrine, and not presuming to know more of God than is revealed, ought
to content himself with saying—that Scripture discloses three divine
minds in one Deity, but that whether there are any _more_ than three,
Scripture does not declare, and he would hold it arrogant to assert. If
the Unitarian is wise _contrary_ to what is written in confining the
unity of God to one person; the Trinitarian is wise _above_ what is
written in confining it to three persons, and with less excuse, for that
one is neither more nor less than one is at least a natural
supposition—but after having admitted that one may be three, there is
nothing but precipitancy and dogmatism in determining that it can be
_only_ three. A consistent and scripturally modest Trinitarian should
simply state, that God his Father, God his Redeemer, and God his
Sanctifier, contained all the revelation that was required for the
salvation of his soul—but as to whether there might not be other divine
persons in the plurality of the godhead, he held it to be a high
mystery, which he did not presume to speak upon—that only these were
revealed, and therefore he knew no more, but yet he did not dare to
assert that his necessities, the requirements of a being so feeble,
comprised and exhausted the whole capabilities and personalities of the
godhead. But Trinitarians are not so modest. They charge the Unitarian
with presumption for limiting the divine essence to one Person—and then
they proceed themselves, with no warrant from Scripture, and none _they_
assert from Reason, to limit it to Three.

If two not three had been the favourite mythological number, if a
Duality and not a Trinity had been the Platonic conception, then, I am
satisfied, that the Christian world, though it might have witnessed the
deification of the Christ, would never have heard of the separate deity
of the Holy Spirit. And this assertion is amply borne out by the
historical fact, that the deification of the Spirit followed afterwards
as a consequence from the deification of the Son, and that the earliest
form of the charge made against the Platonizing Christians by stricter
believers in the unity of the Deity, states the whole extent of their
heresy to be that of introducing a _second_ God,—nothing as yet being
said about third.

It is well known to all in whom duty has so far prevailed over distaste,
as to make them turn in sorrow the heavy pages of Ecclesiastical
History, that there was no discussion respecting the divinity of the
third person in the Trinity until nearly the end of the fourth century.
Nothing can surpass the cool and easy confidence which sets aside this
undeniable fact by boldly asserting that up to this time the doctrine
was never disputed—and that the absence of evidence in support of this
doctrine only arises from the absence of doubt, that nobody stated what
nobody denied. What, the separate deity and personality of the Holy
Ghost never doubted, and yet not one prayer addressed to Him in
Scripture, not one ascription of praise, not one doxology in which his
name is introduced, so that when the Church desired to associate the
third person in the honours of Christian worship it could find no
Scripture formula, and had to make one for the occasion;—not one debate
for nearly four hundred years upon the deity of the Holy Ghost, although
the deity of the Second Person, to whom the Third Person even after his
deification was held to be subordinate, was constantly debated, and yet
the doctrine never doubted nor denied! Now if the doctrine was never
doubted or denied, since the doctrine of the deity of the Son was most
certainly both doubted and denied, why is it that the Holy Spirit does
not appear as the Second person in the Trinity instead of the Third—why
is it that the Council of Nice previous to this time, when the doctrine
_began_ to be doubted and denied, asserts the deity of the Father, and
the deity of the Son, but does not assert the deity of the Holy
Ghost—and why is it that the earliest charge against the philosophizing
Christians was that of introducing a _second_ God, if there was already
a second divine person acknowledged, and therefore the true charge
should have been that of introducing a _third_? It is remarkable that
the same very learned writer, the late Professor Burton, who is the
great Trinitarian authority upon these subjects, after having resolved
the absence of controversy into the possible absence of doubt as to the
deity of the holy Ghost, records the very first instance in which the
Holy Spirit is introduced into a doxology of the Church as taking place
in the fourth century. He quotes Philostorgius the Arian historian, who
declares, “that Flavianus of Antioch, having assembled a number of
monks, was the first to shout out, Glory to the Father, _and_ to the
Son, _and_ to the holy Spirit; for before his time some had said, Glory
to the Father, _through_ the Son _in_ the holy Spirit, which was the
expression in most general use; and others, Glory to the Father, in the
Son and holy Spirit.”[524] Gibbon relates this matter thus. He is
speaking of a temporary triumph of the Arians over the Athanasians, and
of the means employed by the Athanasian laity to manifest their
unwilling acceptance of the Arian Bishops. “The Catholics,” says the
historian, “might prove to the world, that they were not involved in the
guilt and heresy of their ecclesiastical governor, by publicly
testifying their dissent, or by totally separating themselves from his
communion. The first of these methods was invented at Antioch, and
practised with such success, that it was soon diffused over the
Christian world. The doxology, or sacred hymn, which celebrates the
glory of the Trinity, is susceptible of very nice, but material
inflections; and the substance of an orthodox or heretical creed, may be
expressed by the difference of a disjunctive or a copulative particle.
Alternate responses, and a more regular psalmody were introduced into
the public Service by Flavianus and Diodorus, two devout and active
laymen, who were attached to the Nicene faith. Under their conduct, a
swarm of monks issued from the adjacent desert, bands of
well-disciplined singers were stationed in the cathedral of Antioch, the
Glory to the Father, AND the Son, AND the Holy Ghost, was triumphantly
chaunted by a full chorus of voices: and the Catholics insulted, by the
purity of their doctrine, the Arian prelate, who had usurped the throne
of the venerable Eustathius.” Out of such disorders in the Church, from
the rebellious device of laymen to insult an heretical Bishop, sprung
the doxology of our present creeds.

It is very instructive to look a little closely into some of the
passages from the early Fathers which are brought by Trinitarians as
evidence of the recognition of their doctrines by the primitive Church.
There is unquestionably much vague language that will readily coalesce
with the conceptions of a modern orthodox believer; but as soon as you
examine with any strictness, you find that though they use language very
loosely, nothing could be further from their modes of thinking than
modern orthodoxy. For instance, we find the Son and the Holy Spirit
mentioned as objects of a Christian’s reverence—but it is very
remarkable how many of these cases occur when the writers are defending
themselves against a charge of Atheism, as if they were desirous when
repelling such charge to show how many sources of veneration their
religion disclosed. The early Christians who believed in only one God
were called Atheists by the Heathens. To believe in only one God was in
their estimation the next thing to believing in none at all. Those who
believed in many gods were likely enough to call the Christians
Atheists, just as in the present day lecturers in Christ Church call
Unitarianism a God denying Heresy.[525] In vindicating themselves
against this dangerous calumny the early Christians were naturally led
to extend rather than to diminish their objects of worship, and
accordingly in a passage quoted by Professor Burton, from the earliest
Father on whom dependence can be placed, we find not only the Son and
the Spirit, but interposed between the Son and the Spirit, the angels of
Heaven, associated together in their reverence. Hence the passage is
quoted by Roman Catholics in support of the worship of Angels. And if it
is good for the one purpose, it is equally good for the other; nay, if
it is any proof of the separate deity of the Holy Spirit, it is equally
proof of the deity of the angels who are mentioned before him. The
passage is from Justin Martyr whom Professor Burton places A. D. 150.
“Hence it is that we are called Atheists: and we confess that we are
Atheists with respect to such reputed gods as these: but not with
respect to the true God, the Father of justice, temperance, and every
other virtue, with whom is no mixture of evil. But Him, and the Son who
came from Him and gave us this instruction, and the host of the other
good angels which attend upon and resemble them, and the prophetic
Spirit we worship and adore, paying them a reasonable and true honour,
and not refusing to deliver to any one else, who wishes to be taught,
what we ourselves have learnt.”[526] There is another passage from
Justin Martyr, also given by Burton as evidence of the early recognition
of the Trinity, but which is manifestly nothing more than the natural
anxiety of the writer when meeting a charge that perilled his life, the
charge of Atheism, to show the full extent of his sentiments of
reverence. “That we are not Atheists,” says Justin Martyr, “who would
not acknowledge, when we worship the Creator of this Universe, and Jesus
Christ who was our instructor in these things, knowing him to be the Son
of this true God, and assigning to him the _Second_ place. And I shall
prove presently, that we honour the prophetic Spirit in the _third_
rank, and that we are reasonable in so doing.”[527] Now let it be
recollected that these two passages, extending as far as possible the
objects of a Christian’s reverence, occur in Justin Martyr’s Apology for
Christianity against its Gentile oppressors, in which he complains that
the Christians were treated as Atheists, and unjustly punished for not
worshipping the gods. I shall only quote one other passage exhibiting
the modes of thinking respecting the Holy Spirit among the early
Fathers. It is from Origen, A. D. 240, perhaps the most eminent of them
all, and shows clearly, notwithstanding the frequent vagueness and
obscurity of their writings, how far they were removed from modern
Trinitarianism, and that their forms of thought were derived from
Platonism much more than from Christianity, or more strictly from
Platonism engrafted on Christianity. He is speaking of the Son, and
commenting on those words at the beginning of St. John’s Gospel—“all
things were made by him.”

“If it is true,” says Origen, “that _all things were made by him_, we
must inquire whether the Holy Ghost was made by him: for as it seems to
me, if a person says that the Holy Ghost was made, and if he grants that
all things were made by the Logos, he must necessarily admit that the
Holy Ghost was also made by the Logos, the latter preceding him in order
of time. But if a person does not choose to say that the Holy Ghost was
made by Christ, it follows that he must call him unproduced, if he
thinks that this passage in the gospel is true. But there may be a third
opinion, beside that of admitting that the Holy Ghost was made by the
Logos, and that of supposing him to be uncreated, namely, the notion of
there being no substantial individual existence of the Holy Ghost
distinct from the Father and the Son. We, however, being persuaded that
there are three hypostases (persons), the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, and believing that nothing is unproduced beside the Father, adopt
this as the more pious and the true opinion, that all things being made
by the Logos, the Holy Ghost is more honourable than all of them, and
more so in rank than all the things which were made by the Father
through Christ. And perhaps this is the reason why he is not called the
very Son of God, there being only one who by nature and origin is Son,
viz. the only begotten, who seems to have been necessary to the Holy
Ghost, and to have assisted in forming his hypostasis, not only that he
might exist, but also that he might have wisdom, and reason, and
righteousness, and whatever else we suppose him to have, according to
his participation in those qualities which we have before mentioned as
attributed to Christ.” “Such,” says Burton, “is this extraordinary, and
I must add unfortunate passage of Origen, which I have quoted at length,
and have endeavoured to translate with the utmost fairness. If the
reader should decide from it that Origen did not believe in the eternity
of the Holy Ghost, he will think that the enemies of Origen were not
without grounds when they questioned his orthodoxy. It is not my
intention entirely to exculpate him. He is at least guilty of
indiscretion in entering upon such perilous grounds and in speculating
so deeply upon points which after all must elude the grasp of human
ideas and phraseology.” Professor Burton calls this passage
“unfortunate,” for no reason that we can see, except that it discloses
too plainly Origen’s ignorance of Modern Trinitarianism, and shows too
clearly in what sense we are to understand the Platonic language of the
Fathers.

There are two modes of proof by which Trinitarians undertake to
establish the separate existence of the Holy Spirit as a third person in
the godhead. The first mode is by inferences from such passages of
scripture as seem to attribute the titles and offices of deity to the
Holy Spirit. The second method of proof is by independent considerations
of Theology which profess to demonstrate the necessity of a third person
in the godhead in order to compleat the work of man’s salvation.

Trinitarians say, that Scripture both calls the Holy Spirit God, and
assigns to Him a work which none but God could accomplish. Now in both
these respects we have not a shadow of difference with the Trinitarians.
We believe as firmly and we hope as fervently as they do, that the Holy
Spirit is God, and that the Holy Spirit has connections with our souls
which none but our God could hold. We have no controversy with the
Trinitarians, when they assert the Deity, and Personality, and
Operations of the Holy Spirit. It is a mere piece of controversial
dexterity to put these points prominently forward as the true grounds of
our difference—and, whether designedly or not, an unfair impression is
produced against us, by such a mode of statement, as if we were deniers
of the deity and agency of the spirit of God—if indeed any meaning could
be found in such a denial, supposing we were extravagant enough to make
it. To deny the deity of the Spirit of God, would be a proposition as
absolutely without meaning as to deny the humanity of the spirit of man.
We were told by the Lecturer in Christ Church to whom this subject was
committed, that it was of no avail for Unitarians to advance passages in
which the Holy Spirit signified not God himself, but his power and
influence exerted upon man, for that these occasional meanings of the
expression were fully conceded; and that what we have to do, is to
disprove the Trinitarian interpretation of _other_ passages which
attribute to the Holy Spirit, deity, personality, and operation. Now the
Trinitarians must allow us the privilege of taking our faith from
ourselves, not from them, and in carving out for us this employment, the
Lecturer at Christ Church would set us to the task of disproving our own
convictions, of overthrowing our own interpretations, of answering and
opposing _ourselves_. There is only one point of difference between the
Trinitarians and ourselves upon this subject, and that is the only point
to which their arguments never have a reference. They maintain and we
maintain that the Holy Spirit is God. They concede and we concede that
the expression “Holy Spirit” in scripture frequently signifies that
portion of God’s spirit which is given to man naturally or
supernaturally. They maintain however that the Holy Spirit is, not the
one God, but a third person in the godhead—_and here we separate from
them_, maintaining that the Scripture evidence for such a distribution
of the Godhead among several persons is totally imaginary, and that the
theological reasons for such a distribution betray the most arbitrary
and unworthy limitations assigned by man to the infinite and spiritual
nature of God. Now will it be believed that when Trinitarian
controversialists treat this subject they uniformly put forward those
views of it which we do not deny, as if we denied them, and they as
uniformly pass over the only point of difference between us, and avoid
all close grappling with it, laboriously proving that the holy Spirit is
God, which of course we believe, and then taking for granted that he _is
a third person_ in a Trinity, leaving the argument at the very point
where argument ought to have commenced? Will it be believed that the
Lecturer at Christ Church exhausted his strength and time in assiduously
proving that the spirit of God was God, and that it had understanding,
will, and power? Will it be believed that of nearly a three hours’
lecture, certainly not more than five minutes was devoted to the only
point of difference between us—that the common parts of our faith were
laboriously proved—if indeed such an identical proposition, as that the
spirit of God is God, can be called faith—and the single controverted
part left intact? I in my turn take the liberty of declaring that it is
of no avail that Trinitarians adduce passages of scripture attesting the
Deity, Personality, and Operations of the Holy Spirit, for that this is
conceded, if an identical proposition can be conceded,—and that what
they have to do is to prove that the spirit of God is not the one God,
but a third person in the godhead—and if the Lecturer had devoted his
three hours to this, the only point in controversy, he might have
greatly aided, or greatly injured his cause, and have afforded an
opportunity for testing the mutual strength of our views in a way which
is now not possible. Disappointed of finding the controversy conducted
with any closeness by the Lecturer in Christ Church on the only point by
us denied, namely a deity of the Holy Spirit, personally separate from
the deity of our one God, I turn to a published sermon of Dr.
Tattershall’s, in the hope of finding some discussion of our true
difference from an associated authority. But here unfortunately again
precisely the same principle is pursued of proving what is not denied,
and of passing most slightly over the only point of difference. In a
sermon consisting of thirty-four pages just three are devoted to the
matter in controversy,[528] and these I grieve to say occupied with
reasonings so verbal and unsatisfactory, that one is amazed that a manly
and reverential mind could offer or could accept them as the solid and
substantial proofs of a doctrine that affects to such an extent the
being and nature of God. I think it not unbecoming here to declare, that
with respect to the two modes of proof adopted by Trinitarians to
establish the separate deity of the Holy Spirit, the Scriptural proof,
and the Theological proof, I have long and laboriously sought in their
own writers, for some distinct controversial statement of the scriptural
and theological adjustments of this subject; I have examined their
scholars and critics for the verbal part of the argument, and their
divines for the theological part of it, and nowhere can I find anything
definite or tangible to grapple with or oppose. It is at least my
conviction that never was so serious a doctrine as that of a third
person in the godhead admitted upon evidence so small, and I cannot
conceal my strengthened impression, that it has glided into most minds
as an easy consequence from the deity of Christ. Again we avow our
belief that the Holy Spirit is God, but we declare that we cannot find
any scriptural evidence that he is a separate God (personally) from God
our Father, or any theological evidence that He performs a work within
our souls, which work may not be performed by God our Father. If
Trinitarians wish to establish their own doctrine, it is to these two
points that they ought to confine themselves.

Abandoned then to our own methods of discussing this subject by
opponents who assert a doctrine that we deny, and prove only those
portions of it that we admit, I shall endeavour to ascertain, first, the
Scriptural meaning of the expression, “the Holy Spirit” or “Spirit of
God.”

I shall examine the more difficult passages which are usually appealed
to in this controversy.

I shall examine what Trinitarians call “the work of the Spirit,” in
order to ascertain whether it requires a third person in the godhead, or
whether God our Father is not sufficient for it.

And I shall close with some statement of our own views of the
connections of the spirit of God with the spirit of man.

The expression “Holy Spirit” when used in scripture will I think always
be found to designate not God as he is in Himself, whom no man knoweth,
but God in communication with the spirit of man. Whether the Deity holds
intercourse with his creatures naturally or supernaturally, the name
applied to Him in scripture, with respect to those felt or manifested
connections, is that of the Holy Spirit. And there is most holy and
beautiful reason for this peculiar usage. God is a spirit; and he is
therefore only spiritually discerned. Through our spirits He speaks to
us. In our spirits He abides with us. Eye hath not seen him; ear hath
not heard him—but through that portion of his spirit which He has given
us, we know Him, and are His. It is not God without us, but God _within_
us that we know and feel. Externally we know Him not; personally we
conceive him not; as He is, in his own essence and perfections we cannot
think of Him—but He has put His own spirit within us, and that, in
proportion as we have it and cherish it, reveals Him unto us—He has
lighted up from Himself a candle of the Lord in our spiritual being, and
if by communion with Him we keep oil in our lamps, and our lamps trimmed
and burning, His spirit which bloweth where it listeth, listeth to blow
upon us and to feed our flame. And how shall the spirit of man prepare
itself for fresh communications from the spirit of God? Only by removing
from his own spirit whatever is at variance with the spirit of God—by
cleansing the temple, that the holy one may be able to come to us and
manifest himself to a nature that has reverently sought to put away all
deadening impurity, and to brighten the spiritual image in which it was
made—by courting the voices of the soul—by listening amid the tumults of
the world to hear God speaking in our conscience—by cherishing through
obedience, and inviting through prayer the intimations, that by His
spirit, from which ours are derived, He gives us of His will. The spirit
of God originally made the spirit of Man: the spirit of God retains its
connections with the spirit of Man so long as man does not by unholiness
and alien sympathies drive out that holy Spirit: and in measures more
abundantly as we prepare ourselves to receive of His, does He hold
communion with us through affections and affinities fitted to apprehend
Him; and He transforms the will that obeys Him from glory to glory as by
the spirit of the Lord. I apprehend that the preparation which was made
by God for the reception of the gospel and spirit of Jesus Christ, shows
the preparation which all men must make who would qualify themselves for
fresh communications from the Holy Spirit of our Father. The baptism of
repentance prepared the way for the baptism of the holy spirit and of
fire. The heart had to be cleansed before the spirit of God could
descend upon it, and hold communication with it. And ever must there be
a Baptist Ministry breaking the dread repose of sin, awakening the dead
heart, and creating the consciousness of want, before the Christ of God
can breathe in his gentle breath upon our souls, saying unto us,
“receive ye the holy spirit.” The holy spirit of God reveals itself to
the spirit of man in proportion as we remove unholiness from us. What
use of language then can be more affectingly elevating and solemn than
that which designates God, when in communication with man, as the Holy
Spirit? A spirit, he is spiritually discerned: and holy, only those that
are holy have affinities with Him.

Such then is the primary signification of the expression Holy Spirit
when used in the Scriptures—the Holy Spirit of God naturally or
supernaturally in communication with the spirit of man, and in fuller
communication in proportion as man by holiness seeks it and prepares
himself for it. From this however there is derived a secondary
signification, and so natural and easy is the derivative meaning, that
it is a strong confirmation of its primary. That portion of his spirit
which God communicates to man, may be regarded as separated from Him. It
has entered into man and become his. It is a gift, an inspiration from
our God. Man has become the possessor of it, but still God is the origin
of it, and therefore though imparted to us it may still be spoken of as
God’s holy spirit. There are therefore in Scripture two significations
of the Holy Spirit—the primary one—God in communication with man—and the
secondary one—that portion of his spirit which God has communicated,
naturally or supernaturally, and which has become ours. We have received
the Holy Spirit, when we have spiritually received what only God can
communicate. These two comprise, I believe, all the meanings of the
expression, Holy Spirit, _first_, God communicating to man, and
_secondly_ that portion of His spirit, which, by communication, man’s
spirit has received.

I shall give some instances of each of these applications of the phrase.

There can be no difficulty in all those cases in which the holy Spirit
signifies God himself in spiritual communication with man.—“And when
they bring you into the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers;
take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall
say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you, in that same hour, what ye
ought to say.”—Luke xii. 11, 12. Now in the parallel passage in St.
Matthew’s Gospel we have the expression, the Holy Ghost, explained to
mean the spirit of God our Father. “But when they deliver you up, take
no thought how or what ye shall speak. For it shall be given you in that
same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the
spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.”—Matt. x. 19, 20. “Knowing
this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private
interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of
man: but holy men spake, as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” “As
they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Separate
me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them—so they
being sent forth by the Holy Spirit departed unto Seleucia.”—Acts xiii.
2, 4.

The expression the “Spirit of God” is sometimes used with the same
signification, only with this difference, that “the Spirit of God”
frequently signifies the essence and being of God as He is in Himself,
whilst the expression “the Holy Spirit” is I believe never employed
except to designate our heavenly Father when in living communication
with the spirits of his children. “What man knoweth the things of a man,
save the spirit of a man that is in him? Even so the things of God
knoweth no man [or no one] but the spirit of God.”—1 Cor. ii. 11. Here
if the spirit of man means man, the spirit of God must mean God, and how
in opposition to language so precise and definite, a separate
personality could be introduced into the godhead, called the spirit of
God, it is difficult to imagine. “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or
whither shall I flee from thy presence?”—Ps. cxxxix. “By his spirit he
has garnished the heavens: his hand has formed the crooked serpent (the
galaxy).”—Job, xxvi. 13.

I shall now adduce some of the more remarkable cases in which the
various expressions, “spirit,” “holy spirit,” and “spirit of God,” are
used to designate that portion of God’s spirit which naturally or
supernaturally has entered into man, and become ours, but which in
reference to Him from whom it was derived, and with whom it retains
blessed connections, is called the spirit of God. God being a Spirit,
and man being a spirit, whatever man knows or feels of God, may, not
figuratively, but with the strictest truth, be called the Holy Spirit
within him. “If ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to them that ask him.”—Luke, xi. 13. Now that the Holy Spirit
signifies here not a third person in the godhead, but our heavenly
Father’s gifts and inspirations to the soul, is clearly shown by the
parallel passage in St. Matthew’s gospel—“If ye then, being evil, know
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your
Father which is in Heaven give _good things_ to them that ask
Him.”—Matt. vii. 11. “But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God
hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us
by his spirit: for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things
of God.”—1 Cor. ii. 9, 10. Now here the spirit is used first in its
primary sense of God in communication with man, and immediately after in
its secondary sense of that portion of His spirit communicated to man,
for it is just in proportion as it partakes of His spirit that the
spirit of man searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. God
enlightens and man receives—but the light which has entered into man,
since it came from God, may well continue to be called the Spirit of
God. “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit
which is of God;—but the natural man receiveth not the things of the
spirit of God: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned. But we have the mind of Christ.”—1 Cor. ii. 12-16. Here the
Apostle distinctly declares that our portion of the spirit of God is
“the mind of Christ.” In proportion as we have that we know Him, the
only true God, whom to know is life eternal. “Likewise the spirit also
helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we
ought: but the spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings
that cannot be uttered.”—Rom. viii. 26. Now nothing can be more
marvellous in all the marvels of scripture interpretation, than that
this spirit within us which vents itself in groanings that cannot be
uttered should ever have been referred to a third personality in the
godhead. How beautiful is this passage when truly and _spiritually_
considered! We know not what to pray for as we ought; our spiritual
apprehension is feeble and dim; and our vague yearnings after the
heavenly and the perfect are not distinct enough to present
clearly-defined objects to our pursuit and love; yet we have a holy
impulse within us, a divine tendency leading us towards God; God has
given us this Spirit, and partaking of His nature it sighs after the
perfection to which it is akin; it knows not fully its heavenly origin
and end, but still true to the divine instinct it yearns after Him and
tends towards Him; it sighs for a glory and a happiness which it cannot
distinctly conceive or express, but God who gave it understands the
prayer, and hears this intercession of His own spirit—that divine
impulse planted by Himself which now supplicates Him to make bright its
dim longings and to help it forwards unto that glory towards which the
divinity within it tends—and He who searcheth the heart knoweth what is
the mind of that spirit which He himself put there, and that it maketh
intercession with Him, for all holy ones,[529] that He would fulfil the
promise of the heavenly impulse that sighs for good.[530] How has
Trinitarianism destroyed the spiritual power of the Scriptures, by
taking all this beautiful and holy meaning out of the individual heart,
and for the sighings which cannot be uttered after the immortal and the
good, which God, who inspired them, comprehends and blesses,
substituting a third Person in the godhead who intercedes for us to
another Person, with groanings that cannot be uttered!

I believe that these two significations of the expression, “Holy
Spirit,” so closely connected as scarcely to be two, will explain all
the cases of its scriptural occurrence; first, God Himself in
communication with the Soul, and secondly, that portion of His spirit
which He has communicated to man, and which as being His, derived from
Him, and a portion of the true knowledge of His Mind, is called His Holy
Spirit.

I shall now examine the Scriptural evidence which is chiefly relied upon
in this controversy, as proving, not the personality and deity of the
Holy Spirit, for here we agree, but a personality and deity distinct
from those of God our Father.

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”—Matt. xxviii. 19;
or, into the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the word, “name,”
by an idiom of the Hebrew language, being redundant.

To baptize into a person was a form of expression signifying the
reception of the religious ideas associated with that person. Thus the
Jews were said to be baptized into Moses, because they received the
religious ideas associated with the institutions of that Prophet: and on
the other hand, the Samaritans were said to be baptized into Mount
Gerizim, because they received the religious ideas associated with the
belief that there, and not at Jerusalem, was the appointed place of the
Temple. The formula then of baptizing in the name of the Father, and of
the Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, signified nothing more than the
acceptance of the religious ideas associated with God in this new
manifestation of Himself, revealed through the Christ, and accompanied
by the operations of His Spirit, witnessing, both internally and
externally, to the new light that had come into the world, the promised
reign of the spirit of God. These were the words which most readily were
associated with, and suggested those religious ideas which were looked
upon as constituting the characteristic faith of one who was willing to
enter into the gospel kingdom of Heaven, that is, to adopt the
_Christian_ idea of God and of Religion. The Father, the Christ, the
Spirit of God in us giving us some communion with that Father, by
uniting us through spiritual sympathies with that Christ—is not this of
the very soul of Christianity? God manifested in Jesus, and our souls
accepting the revelation, because the spirit of our Father within us
draws us towards him who had the same spirit without measure—is not this
to express in a few words all the characteristic and peculiar ideas of
Christianity, and therefore most fit to be used as suggesting summarily
to matured converts the new faith into which they were baptized? The
same set of ideas might have been as fully expressed by the shorter form
of being baptized “into Christ,” for this would imply the possession and
acceptance of all the religious ideas associated with his person and
ministry—and accordingly we find that in every recorded case of baptism
or allusion to baptism in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles,
the expression simply and briefly is to “baptize into Christ,” and never
once is there an allusion to the form of baptism into the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Now this demonstrates two things: first
that the Apostles did not look upon these words as _a form prescribed by
Christ_: and secondly, that they did not regard them as a confession of
faith in a tri-personal God, else would they never have neglected all
mention of the _first_ and _third_ persons, and simply baptized into
Christ, that is, into the religion of the Christ. There is a remarkable
confirmation of this view, if indeed it can be supposed to want
confirmation, in the language of Paul to some disciples at Ephesus, who
had not received the witnessing power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
They declare that they had not so much as heard whether there was any
Holy Spirit. To _what_, then, says the Apostle were you baptized; not
into _whom_, observe, but into _what_ were you baptized,—that is, was
not the manifestation and participation of God’s Spirit one of the
religious ideas and expectations of your faith as converts. And they
answer that they had only been baptized into the baptism of John, who
had _promised_ the Holy Spirit, but had no power to _confer_ it. And
then Paul baptized them into Jesus, and they received the Holy Spirit.
Now can any one read this passage and believe that the Holy Ghost
implies the third person in a Trinity: was it not simply a portion of
God’s spirit received by the first believers as an attestation to the
religion of the Christ?

Nothing can be more arbitrary than to assert that baptism implies the
personality and deity of that into which a person is baptized. The
Apostle Paul says that Christians were baptized into the death of
Christ. Rom. vi. 3. Is the death of Christ therefore a person and a God?
Is it not simply one of the religious ideas which their faith embraced?

The personality and deity of the Holy Spirit we indeed do not deny; but
the methods by which Trinitarians attempt the proof of this self-evident
proposition, are, like all proofs of identical propositions,
unsatisfactory to an extreme. The Lecturer in Christ Church, when
meeting the objection, that baptism into Christ was no proof of his
deity, because we have also the expression, “baptism into Moses,”
dropped out of sight the true bearing of the objection against the
_deity_ of Jesus, and argued that the expression, baptism into Moses,
was so far a proof of the personality of the Holy Spirit, because Moses
was a person. Was the death of Christ, a person? Was Mount Gerizim, a
person? We do not deny the personality of the Holy Spirit—though this is
no way of proving it. We do deny that the deity of Christ is implied in
baptism into his name, and the force of the expression, baptism into
Moses, in this bearing of it, was either not seen or was put aside.

The argument, that because _three words_ follow one another, without any
expressed distinction, they must all refer to subjects of the same
nature, co-equal and co-extensive, and this, too, as the strongest,
indeed the only direct evidence of a Trinity in the Godhead, is really
one of those arguments for a doctrine of revelation, which a mind with
any reverence knows not how properly to discuss. I am glad to be able to
say, that Dr. Tattershall pronounces this to be only a _presumptive_
proof of the separate personality of the Holy Spirit, that is, in fact,
no proof at all, but merely such a hint as might lead to the presumption
that there may be additional evidence, and which, therefore, in the
absence of such additional evidence, amounts to nothing. If any one,
however, advances such an argument, we have only to ask first, is any
one really content to rest such a doctrine on such a proof, and call
this Revelation? and secondly, to advance in our turn, other passages of
Scripture, where this principle of interpretation cannot be maintained.
If the concurrence of the words, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit,
necessarily implies that each of these refers to a person who is God,
and that when taken together they make up the entire nature of God—then,
I ask, what is the necessary inference from such expressions as
these,—“I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and _the
elect angels_, that thou observe these things?”—1 Tim. v. 21. Now if the
argument is conclusive that infers in the one case the deity of Jesus,
it must be equally conclusive, when it infers, in the other, the deity
of the elect angels. The Trinitarian answer will be,—“We know that the
angels are not God, and in accordance with this knowledge, we interpret
the passage:” and equally do we answer, that when such a passage is
given us as _proof_ of the deity of the Lord Jesus, we know that he was
a man, and in accordance with this knowledge do we interpret the
passage. Other instances might be given of similar modes of
expression:—“And all the people greatly feared the Lord _and Samuel_,” 1
Sam. xii. 18; and more strikingly still, Rev. iii. 12, _where the name
of a place_ is associated as a religious idea, with the names of God and
Christ. “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my
God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of
my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem,
which cometh down out of Heaven from my God, and [_I will write upon
him_] my new name.”

There is only one other passage in which these three expressions occur
together; and it must have a precisely similar explanation: “The grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Spirit, be with you all.” Now here the expression “_communion_ of
the Holy Spirit,” fixes the meaning of the passage. The word communion
signifies “participation,” “a having in common.” Thus St. Paul speaks of
“the communion of the sufferings of Christ,” Philipp. iii. 10. In this
sense, then, it can have no reference to a person, and must signify
simply a participation of that spiritual presence, comfort, and power of
God, which was the promise and the witness of the religion of the
Christ. In explaining such passages, we have again and again to recal
ourselves to the belief, that we are actually considering the strongest
Scriptural assertions of the doctrine of a Trinity of persons in the
unity of the Godhead. The first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians
closes thus: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. My love be
with you all in Christ Jesus.” Who thinks of inferring the equality of
Paul with Jesus? And yet, if such a mode of reasoning is allowable, from
the close of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, it is impossible to
give any reason for its not being equally conclusive when applied to the
close of the first Epistle of the Corinthians. But such verbal
reasonings are in every way unworthy of the solemn character of
revelation, nor can the mind long dwell upon them without feeling how
painfully they interfere with the sentiment of Reverence, and what a
lowering it is of Christ and Christianity to place them in such lights.

The portion of Scripture, however, which is mainly relied upon to prove
the _distinct_ deity and personality of the Holy Spirit, is that most
solemn and faithful promise of Christ to his disciples, in which the
Spirit of Truth is described as a Comforter which the Father would send
in his name, and who, when he came, would testify of Jesus, and bring to
their remembrance all things that he had said unto them, but which they
had not understood. Now let us connect this promise of a Comforter
previous to his death, with a similar promise after the resurrection,
and then endeavour to ascertain the meaning. In the first chapter of the
Book of Acts, at the eighth verse, it is written, “Ye shall receive
power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be
witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria,
and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” Now we shall find that the
Holy Spirit which came upon them was the Spirit of Truth, a truer
knowledge of Christ, a portion of the Spirit of God, a sympathy with and
an understanding of the Mind of the Father of Jesus, which they did not
possess before;—in the one case comforting them for the loss of their
friend and their master, by giving them a participation of his and of
his Father’s Spirit,—in the other case, qualifying them spiritually to
be witnesses unto him, to be his Apostles and Preachers, an office for
which their previous misconceptions of the true character of the Christ,
their alienation from the true Spirit of God, as manifested in Jesus,
had totally disqualified them. Why it was that Jesus must “go away,” in
order that the Spirit of Truth might come unto them, in order that the
Spirit of the world should be separated from their ideas of the Christ,
and the Spirit of God take its place, we shall fully see. Previous to
the death of Jesus, the views of the Apostles respecting their Messiah
were Jewish and worldly—after the Resurrection and Ascension they became
Christian and Spiritual. How was it that Jesus must personally leave
them, in order that the Spirit of Truth might come unto them? “It is
expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter
will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”

The Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of the Christ, introduced
a necessary change into the conceptions of the Apostles; these drove out
of their Messianic idea the spirit of the World, and introduced into it
the spirit of God. They could not retain their Jewish ideas of the reign
of the Messiah, in connexion with the crucified Jesus. If they held by
their Jewish faith on this matter, they must abandon Jesus. If they held
by Jesus, they must abandon their Jewish ideas, and remodel their faith.
But God takes care that they shall hold by Jesus: and this is His mode
of spiritualizing their conceptions of Christ and of Christianity. God
lifts him from the dead and places him in Heaven. The Christ returns to
earth to show that God was with him; and he ascends into Heaven, to
repel the imagination which otherwise might possibly arise, nay, which
actually had arisen, that even yet he might raise his standard on the
earth, and realize the gigantic illusion of the Jew. By this means, the
Apostles were placed in this position:—they must retain their faith in
Jesus, for how could they battle against God, or hold out against such
evidence as the Christ rising from the tomb, and the Christ passing into
the skies;—and yet if they are to regard Jesus as their Messiah, they
must modify all their Jewish views, and conceive of the Christ anew. And
accordingly this was the plan and process of their conversion, of their
introduction to the true Christianity, of their baptism into the Spirit
of God. Since Jesus was thus evidently the Christ, and yet could not be
adapted to their Jewish views, of course all their Jewish views must
yield, and adapt themselves to _him_. His life and destinies were the
_fixed_ facts, with which their conceptions of the Christ must now be
harmonized. You now see how when the Spirit of Truth came upon them, it
testified of Jesus, it took of his and showed it unto them, it threw
illumination upon words and deeds of his, which, when contemplated from
the Jewish point of view, caught not the sympathies of their souls, and
like invisible writing, waited for the heat and light of Truth to fall
upon them, and bring out the meaning. His Death struck down a principal
part of their errors: and his Exaltation forced upon them a new idea of
his kingdom. Never again could they confound the Messiah with a temporal
prince. Whatever Christianity might be, henceforth it must be connected
with the immortality of Heaven. Christianity could not be separated from
the Christ, and the Christ was with God; and they remembered his prayer
and promise, that they were to be with him where he was.

All this would necessarily be suggested to them from their identifying
the Christ with the risen Jesus. Nothing more would be necessary to
unfold this train of spiritual thought. It was the first fulfilment of
that profound prophecy, “When the Comforter is come, even the Spirit of
Truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me, and
shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you.” And this Spirit of Truth did lead them
into all truth—it gave them no new revelation, but it called to their
remembrance, and taught them to understand a revelation which Jesus had
before offered to them in vain—and so, in the words of his own promise,
it glorified him, for it “took of his, and showed it unto them.” The
Apostles were now in a position to look upon the Christ from a right
point of view, and to receive the Spirit of Truth and God. The scales of
illusion dropped from their eyes, and they began to see Jesus as he was.
From the hour that circumstances constrained them to draw their
Christianity from the life and destinies of the Christ, their minds
began to open, and the Spirit of Truth to teach them all things, and to
call to their remembrance whatsoever Jesus had said unto them, no longer
dimly understood, but irradiated with moral light, because seen in right
connexions, and explained by the interpretation of events. Who can
retain his fancies in opposition to direct experience? and experience
was now enlightening the Apostles. How could they go on dreaming of an
Earthly Prince, when their Christ was in the skies? From that hour their
souls began to be transfigured, and they walked in the light of the
other world, and the Christ to whom they looked became their leader to
Immortality. How could they go on in their unspiritual imaginations,
when the Captain of their Salvation stood constantly before their eyes,
a crucified man, and a risen immortal? From that hour they became
soldiers of the Cross, and their only victories were over themselves,
and the powers of evil; and the only battle-cry of the Son of Man, when
idol after idol fell prostrate before the Truth, and their Master in the
skies, in the successes of his faith, led on the movements of humanity,
and, wherever his spirit struck root, banded a new force against the
enemies of man, and mustered fresh hosts for conquest. How could they go
on in their national arrogance, and in their sectarian intolerance, when
they were obliged to draw their moral notions of Christianity from the
life of Christ, and that spoke such different lessons? From that hour
their anti-social temper began to soften, their exclusiveness to bend
and give way, their deep-cut lines of national distinctness to disappear
in the fully developed features of our common humanity. In the light of
_his_ Spirit, what _could_ they be but children of God, and brethren of
mankind? They had to harmonize his Kingdom with his Character, and that
led them into all truth. They had to read the glory of God in the face
of Christ; and the light that beamed there was grace and truth. They had
to take their Christianity from the Master’s life, and that kept them
right. Its lesson was of the one fold, and the one shepherd—of the one
God and Father of all, and of one type of the connexions between
humanity and Heaven—one Mediator between man and God, the man Christ
Jesus. And so at last, when fitted for it by the teaching of events, the
Spirit of Truth, at once their Comforter and their Teacher, descended
upon them, and then they became “witnesses unto him.” They read his life
anew, and reported it to the world, and the world read it too, and has
ever since been studying that exhaustless revelation. They saw in it
more and more of the Saviour’s spirit and purposes, and after the
illumination had come upon them, the providence of God so disposed the
external events that affected the infant Church, that they went forth
bearing the light that lighted them unto all the world. Persecution
scattered them from land to land, and they went carrying with them their
priceless treasure. They were hunted from city to city, but all the
faster flew the Gospel. The stake received them, and it became as a new
cross of Christ, and the blood of his martyrs witnessed unto him. Are we
speaking of the same men who in Gethsemane’s garden forsook their Lord
and fled—who in the Temple Court denied him to his face—who, when he was
led to the Cross, abandoned him in terror, and when he died there, laid
their heads in the dust, because their poor ambition was fallen to the
earth? Are they the same men, who in the Gospels are narrow-minded,
ambitious, and false—that in the Acts of the Apostles come forth bold,
resolute, spiritual witnesses for Jesus, and dauntless martyrs to his
truth? We can scarcely believe that we are reading of the same men, when
we turn from the page of the Evangelists to the record of their deeds,
_after_ the Death and the Ascension of the Christ annihilated their
errors, and the Spirit of Truth and of God had fallen upon them.
Contrast the prayer,—“Lord grant us to sit on thy right hand and on thy
left in thy kingdom,” or, “Lord wilt thou at this time restore the
kingdom to Israel?”—with this, “Lord, thou art God, which hast made
Heaven and Earth, and the Sea, and all that in them is; who by the mouth
of thy servant David hast said, why did the heathen rage, and the people
imagine vain things? The kings of the Earth stood up, and the rulers
were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. For of
a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both
Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel,
were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel
determined before to be done: And now, Lord, behold their threatenings,
and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy
word; by stretching forth thine hand to heal, and that signs and wonders
may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus!” How came this
difference? What passed over them and turned them into new men? The
Spirit of Truth had come unto them, that great Comforter, the Spirit of
understanding and of God: they saw it all, and they were worldly and
weak no more, but strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might? And
this Comforter never again left them; the truth broke upon them and
became their stay for ever,—it was the Spirit of God dwelling in them,
and abiding for ever, his imperishable light in the soul, once given
never to be withdrawn. It was just the difference between Spiritual
light and Spiritual darkness, in their effects upon character. It was
just the difference between the spirit that is of the world, and the
spirit that is of God. It was just the difference between our nature
when it is right and when it is wrong with God; when it is stumbling in
darkness, the dupe of illusions, and when it is furnished with
everlasting principles, and walking in the light of life. In the Gospels
they are men palsied by the feebleness of error—in the Acts of the
Apostles they are men omnipotent in the power of Truth. Is this change
in their characters capable of being accounted for? Yes, if you grant
the facts of Christ’s history,—but not otherwise. How otherwise you are
to get across the chasm between the Gospels and the Acts of the
Apostles, I know not. Take those facts as causes, and the bridge is
easy. What a step is it from the fishermen of Galilee to the Apostles of
Christ—from the ignorance of Jewish peasants, to the Communicators of
the mightiest impulse that Society has ever felt, the agents of the
mightiest influence that ever Providence has put forth upon the soul of
man,—the creators of new institutions, new forms of character, new civil
relationships;—before whose preaching religions and empires fell,—at
whose word Liberty first started into life, not as a spirit of
opposition, but as the gentle child of brotherhood and love,—and who are
still in the monuments they have left behind them, the heralds of human
progress and the revolutionizers of the world! Who will deny that the
spirit of God was here? Not we: we are ready to maintain it against the
world. Who denies that the spirit of God still accompanies his Gospel?
Not we: we believe it in the depths of our hearts. How wonderful the
impulse, these men gave, and still give to the heart of the world! What
difficulties had they to conquer! their own characters, and violent
prepossessions—and they conquered these. The curse of the Priest, the
arm of the Ruler, the scoff of the People—and they conquered these. The
attractions of Heathenism; the licentiousness of its morality; the
gracefulness of its idolatry; its religion for the senses; its
philosophy for the sceptic; its indifference to speculative truth; its
equal regard for all gods, and all forms of worship that would only be
content to dwell together in peace,—and they conquered these. Think of
this wonderful History, and say whether you can explain it except as the
New Testament explains it. What would account for the fortunes of the
Apostles, if Christianity was not from God? The world of Causes and
Effects is but a game of Chance, if such things can be, and their origin
an accidental imagination, their foundation a falsehood or a dream. Who
will account for such men being enlightened against their own wills, and
forced into the front ranks of humanity contrary to their own desires—if
the history is not true? But rob not the History of its true power—take
not the spirit of life out of the gospel—by telling us of a third person
in the Trinity whom Jesus sent to supplant the free minds of the
Apostles. No, it was the free spirit of God acting upon the free spirit
of men that opened their eyes to see the things that were hidden from
them before; and they walked forth in the light of these wondrous
events, and looked now upon their Christ as those from whose spiritual
sight the bandage of the world had been taken away. The Comforter, which
is the Spirit of TRUTH, came unto them, and taught them all things, and
rectifying their former misconceptions took of the things of Christ, and
showed it unto them. He spoke not of himself. He added nothing to the
revelation already made by Jesus:—the divine characters were already
impressed on the life and destinies of the Christ—and the Spirit of
Truth guided them to it, and brought out the full meaning of the already
finished revelation. Still does the world want light to read that
revelation. Still does many an interpreter come to the reading of it
with a Jewish veil upon his heart. But there is new light still to break
forth out of God’s word. Although it would almost seem as if another day
of Pentecost would be needed to drive out the spirit of the world, the
spirit of system and of man, by the mightier Spirit of God—and to guide
our exclusive tempers, our sectarian and narrow hearts into the religion
of reality—of the merciful and perfect Christ, full of grace and truth.

It is impossible to display with any minuteness the confusion that is
introduced into the Scriptures by the supposition that the Holy Spirit
is a third infinite Mind associated with the Father and the Son. In one
passage it is said, “If I cast out devils by _the Spirit of God_, then
the kingdom of God is come unto you;” in another passage it is said, “If
I with _the finger of God_ cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God
is come unto you.” Are we to understand then different things by “the
Spirit of God” and “the finger of God,”—or do they not both plainly
signify the power and presence of the One God who wrought in
Christ:—“the Father who dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.”

In one passage it is said, “Wait for the promise of the Father—ye shall
be baptized with _the holy spirit_ not many days hence.” In another
passage of the same writer it is said, “Tarry ye in the city, until ye
be endued with _power from on high_.” Are we to understand by the Holy
Spirit anything different from ‘power from on high:’ or rather are we
not to understand by both the fulfilment of the promise of the Father by
His own power and presence?

In one passage it is said, “We are his witnesses of these things, and so
is also _the Holy Spirit_, which God hath given to them that obey Him.”
In another passage it is said, “The _works_ that I do in my Father’s
name, they bear witness of me.” Is it not evident then that _the works_
which the Apostles did, were the works of God, His spirit working by
them, witnessing to the truth of their testimony?

If the Holy Spirit is a distinct Person from God the Father, then the
third Person, and not the first person in the Trinity, nor the second
person, must on the Trinitarian view be regarded as the Father of Jesus,
for it is written, “the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power
of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” And yet the Trinitarian
hypothesis is, that it was neither the third person, nor the first, but
the second person in the godhead, that took humanity into union with his
deity. But there is no end of these painful inconsistencies. So again
Jesus is said to be raised from the dead by God, and again to be
“quickened by the Spirit:” but surely the Trinitarian hypothesis would
require that the divine nature of the Christ, the second person in the
Trinity, should raise up the human Jesus, with which it had been united.
Who will harmonize these things for us? Who can without pain, nay,
without asking pardon of God for the irreverence, contemplate His
spiritual nature in such representations?

It is said of the Holy Spirit, that He would not speak of himself. Can
He then be a distinct God in the unity of the godhead, and not speak of
Himself? Is this the reason that Scripture contains no proof of his
separate existence? Is it not evident that the Spirit of Truth, _added
nothing_ to the revelation that was in Christ, but brought it out,
_illuminated_, by an after influence on the minds of the Apostles, what
he said and did?

It is said in Scripture that no one knows the Son but the Father—and
that no one knows the Father but the Son:—but if the Holy Spirit is a
third person in the godhead, equal in every respect, this must be an
erroneous statement.

The last scriptural proof I shall give that the Holy Spirit is not a
third infinite Person in the godhead is the very decisive one that
Scripture offers not a single ascription of praise or glory to Him, and
contains not a single doxology in which He is included. Could this be so
if he was really and distinctively God? Scripture contains ascriptions
of praise to Christ, and even to the Angels; it connects together the
names of God and Christ, in innumerable cases where it makes no mention
of the Holy Spirit.—John v. 17. xiv. 21. “Father!—this is life eternal
to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”
Now if Trinitarianism is true, the Father, and even with the addition of
Jesus Christ whom He has sent, does not constitute the only true God.

“Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”—1
John i. 3.

“Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.”—2 John i.
3.

“He that abideth in the doctrine of the Christ, he hath both the Father
and the Son.”—2 John i. 9.

“For whoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the
Son of Man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his
Father’s, and of the holy angels.”—Luke ix. 26. 1 Tim. v. 21.

“He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I
will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess
his name before my Father and before his angels.”—Rev. iii. 5.

“And every creature which is in Heaven, and on the earth, and under the
earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I
saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that
sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.”—Rev. v, 13.

Now if it be a fact that there is not one scriptural ascription of glory
to the Holy Ghost, how is it that the Church of England can so
confidently say, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the
Holy Ghost: _as it was so in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be_.”
The beginning that is here spoken of must have _begun after_ all the
books of the New Testament were written. We have already traced in
ecclesiastical history the beginning of that doxology, in the latter
part of the fourth century—and a beginning in its attendant
circumstances not very reputable, nor such as should be countenanced by
those who preach submission to _Church Authorities_.

The learned and profound Lardner, modest as learned, remarks upon the
assumption contained in this doxology of the prayer book, “as it was in
the beginning.” “Doubtless this is said by many very frequently, and
with great devotion. But can it be said truly? Does not that deserve
consideration? Is there any such doxology in the New Testament? If not,
how can it be said, to have been _in the beginning_? Are not the books
of the New Testament the most ancient, and the most authentic Christian
writings in all the world? It matters not much to inquire, when this
doxology was first used, or how long it has been in use, if it is not in
the New Testament. And whether it is there or not may be known by those
who are pleased to read it with care: as all may, in Protestant
countries, where the Bible lies open, to be seen and read by all men.”
(Postscript I. to “A Letter on the Logos.”)

Weak and almost incredibly insufficient as is the _scriptural_ evidence
for a third Person in the godhead, the _theological_ evidence is still
weaker and more arbitrary; and betrays most fully those inadequate
conceptions of the divine nature which form the supports of all the
popular creeds and churches. You are aware of the Trinitarian argument
for the necessity of a _second_ person in the godhead; for these
orthodox theologians presume to reason upon abstract principles about
the nature of God to an extent that the Unitarians whom they condemn for
this very practice never have approached to and which indeed we hold to
be arbitrary and presuming to the last degree. We are gravely told by
divines who profess the utmost humility and a horror of all speculation,
that if God was one Being in the sense that we are one, He would have no
resources in his own Nature enabling Him to forgive Sin; and that if
there were not at least two persons in the godhead, the one to make
atonement and the other to receive it, our Father in Heaven would be
placed in these circumstances,—either He must forgive, and since his Law
had been broken without the infliction of an adequate penalty, exhibit
his Character without TRUTH; or He must refuse to forgive, and retaining
his Truth, exhibit his Character without MERCY. Now when _a human
reasoner_ lays down these preliminaries as necessary parts of the
constitution of the divine mind, I am amazed that he has ever after the
conscience to charge other men with rash speculations on the subjects of
Theology, or with reasoning upon abstract principles about the things of
God. Atonement _is_ made for every sin: in that the Trinitarian is
right. The sinner bears upon a burdened soul the weight of the cross,
and faints in sorrow. Through a crucifixion and an agony does every
erring heart return to God. The penalty is paid in bitter shame and
tears, in the consciousness of degradation and of eternal loss, in the
deep humiliation of a spirit that has quenched within it the divine
flame, and treated with no respect the image of God in which it was
made. Can such a being sin and escape without atonement—can a spiritual
creature darken the angel and cherish the animal, and yet pay no
penalty, start at last with no horror, and throb with no remorseful
agony? No—the sinner must die in his sins, if he is to escape the
piercings of his better nature, the open eye of his conscience fixed in
awful steadiness of gaze upon the terrors of his state. Who that has
ever felt a throb of penitence, who that has ever known the prostration
of a soul awakened to a sense of sin, the deep misery of the purer
spirit looking sorrowfully on the debasements of our being, as Christ
looked upon Peter, who that has ever felt these things will deny that
sin, every sin, has its atonement, and instead of questioning the
_vicarious_ sacrifice as too dreadful, will not rather put it away from
him only as too easy, too unreal, too remote from the sense of
individual agony and burden, to meet and satisfy the inward and
untransferable reality? We blame not the Trinitarians for speaking of
the atonement required by sin. We blame them for not treating that
subject with sufficient strictness, with sufficient severity, with
sufficient energy of application to individual consciences. How much
more awakening it is to tell a man of the atonement that he pays within,
of the cross that is laid upon his humiliated heart, than to tell him of
a metaphysical necessity in God’s nature that required the death of an
infinite being, the blood of God, for this awful expression is used and
defended at Christ Church,[531] to make satisfaction for the offence of
a finite creature. This is the arbitrary assumption of Trinitarianism
that requires most to be exposed, that the sin of a finite being is an
infinite quantity, and that his penitence cannot atone for it, for his
penitence is not infinite. Now the men who assert this strange thing,
should at least be cautious how they charge Unitarians with arbitrary
reasonings and speculations. Can Reason exhibit, or does Scripture any
where say, that the sin of finite man is infinite in the sight of God,
and yet unless this most extravagant of all propositions can be
established the whole Trinitarian Theology falls to the ground, for then
the only atonement for sin will be the crucifixion of the erring and
repenting spirit, and none more dreadful can be given or conceived. I am
perfectly aware that cautious and refined controversialists would not
assert the infinite character of man’s sinfulness, and that they would
explain away the doctrine of the Atonement; but the Lecturers at Christ
Church are not cautious controversialists, they have no notion of such
refinements, and they do assert it without abatement. If God’s unity,
says one of them,[532] was like man’s unity, He could not forgive, yet
preserve His holiness. And therefore I suppose, since man has no
tri-personal resources in his unity, that _he_ can forgive only because
his holiness is of an imperfect kind, and as his holiness becomes more
strict he will less readily forgive, so that when he becomes quite
perfect he will be quite implacable. But perhaps the Trinitarian
_resource_ in this difficulty, is that _man_ too forgives, yet keeps his
truth and holiness, in consideration of the atonement offered for all
sin. The immoral plea that man is not the _Lawgiver_, cannot be offered
by those whose difficulty is one respecting holiness. A holy mind is as
much bound by the laws of holiness, as if it was itself the Lawgiver.

I have introduced here this arbitrary, metaphysical, and unscriptural
speculation, employed by the Trinitarians to establish, _a priori_, the
necessity of a second person in the godhead, only to prepare you for a
similar mode of reasoning which is applied to prove the necessity for a
_third_ person in the godhead. There are works, they say, carried on in
the soul of man, that require a Third Person, another infinite Mind in
the godhead. Solemnly we say that this is making too free with the
infinite nature of God. What are those works, or what works can be
conceived, to which God our Father is not adequate? Is it not very like
irreverence for a human being to say,—_my_ salvation cannot be carried
on by one infinite and perfect Spirit, but requires three infinite and
perfect Spirits? Ought not such conclusions of Reason as these to be
very distinctly supported by Revelation before they are advanced with
any boldness, and other men called no Christians, and treated
accordingly, for no other iniquity than that of humbly refusing to speak
so confidently of God’s nature, and to put these limitations upon Him
without proof? But even supposing that the orthodox reasonings about the
nature of sin were correct, and the inability of one perfect mind to
forgive his creatures, and rescue a sinner from his sins, established,
what necessities remain that require the existence of a _third_ infinite
Mind—what operations within the human soul are to be carried on, for
which God the Father and God the Son are not sufficient? I know nothing
more wonderful than that the Christian world should at this day admit
the existence of a third person in the godhead, without ever raising the
question, or having the doubt suggested to them, is not God our Father
_sufficient_ for these things? I intreat you to discard from your minds
the Trinitarian assertion that we deny the operations attributed by them
to the Holy Spirit—we do not deny them—the connexions of the Spirit of
God with the spirit of man we hold as the most solemn, intimate and
blessed truth, the very soul of worship, of hope, and of spiritual
life—take away this, and religion has neither power nor meaning—but we
do deny that the Spirit of our Father is insufficient to maintain every
spiritual connexion with the souls of his children; we bring the secret
griefs, penitence, and aspirations of our being to Him who heard the
prayers and strengthened the soul of Christ;—and when light descends
upon us, so that we almost hear the encouragements of His voice, and see
the beckonings of His hand, we know that it is the Spirit of our Father
who sends the blessing from above, and gives to them that ask.

We entreat Trinitarians to address themselves to this particular point,
and to explain to us the moral or metaphysical necessities that require
a third person in the godhead, and render two perfect and infinite Minds
inadequate to the work of Man’s Salvation. They are very explicit and
full in their statement of _reasons_ exhibiting the incompetency of one
infinite spirit to save a sinner, and necessitating the introduction of
a second—we ask them to be equally explicit in explaining to us the
inadequacy of _two_ BEINGS, each of them possessed of the full
perfections of godhead, to rescue, teach, comfort, and bless, that not
naturally unkindred spirit of man, which Scripture tells us is ‘the
candle of the Lord,’ and ‘the inspiration of the Almighty.’ It will not
serve the Trinitarian theologians to refuse us this explanation on the
grounds that they take the doctrine as it is revealed, and inquire no
further—for they _do_ enter into very copious explanations of the
theological necessity for a _second_ person in the godhead, and they
very confidently state it as a fact in divine metaphysics, that if the
resources of God could not have supplied two infinite minds, no sin
could ever have found a pardon—and if after this readiness of
explanation respecting the second person they refuse us all explanation
respecting the third, the conclusion will certainly be suggested, that
they offer no explanations only because they have none to offer.
Conceding for a moment the fundamental principles of Trinitarian
theology, that the Father of our spirits could not receive the penitence
of His children and shed His blessing upon their returning hearts, until
forgiveness was rendered possible by a co-equal and co-eternal God
meeting the demands of a Righteousness that, if dwelling in only one
perfect Mind, could not pardon;—what is there I ask _after_ the
sacrifice of Christ had removed the difficulty, and opened the
communication between God and his children, and left the divine spirit
free to love, and operate upon, the justified,—what is there remaining
to restrict the workings of the Omnipotent and Omnipresent Spirit of God
our Father—to render him incompetent for our sanctification, in addition
to the previous incompetency for our redemption, which Trinitarians are
so far from scrupling to assign to Him that they make it a first
principle of their theology, and attempt to prove it by Reason.

Our One God they tell us, in the human sense of oneness, would be a
helpless Being: on their very first sin, his children would be plucked
out of His hands, and find him a God unable to save. Or, if He could
forgive the repentance of His creatures, it would imply a Morality so
lax, that He would be a God not worth serving.[533] To such dizzy
heights of Theology do Trinitarians who abjure Reason in religion carry
their reasonings upon the nature of God, and look into the dread
profound, and speak confidently, as if they understood it all. Again I
say, let us grant them all this, and still the question remains that
never has been answered, after the sacrifice of Christ has set at
liberty the Spirit of our Father to come freely into loving,
regenerating, and sanctifying contact with the spirits of his children,
what necessity is there for a _third_ person in the godhead to bless and
save our souls, or what works are to be carried on _within_ us, which
God the Father and God the Son are not competent to perform? Has not the
spirit of our Father access to His children, who are brought nigh to Him
through Christ; and if so, what is the office and what the need of a
third infinite Mind? We acknowledge with all our soul’s devotion that
every thing good in man comes, yes, and comes immediately, from the
Spirit of our God; but is not our Father with us, and is His Spirit
straitened that he cannot save? On this matter we abide with the
Apostles who say:—“Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and
cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning.” We are told that the Holy Spirit uses ‘the
word,’ as its instrument, in the work of spiritual regeneration. If so,
the Holy Spirit must be God our Father, for the Apostle goes on to
say:—“Of his own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should
be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” “Now our Lord Jesus Christ
himself, and God even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us
everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts
and establish you in every good word and work.”[534] Now here, whilst no
mention whatever is made of the Holy Spirit as a separate agent, the
peculiar offices of the Comforter are ascribed to the spirit of our
Father, and, what to Christians is equivalent, the spirit of Christ, for
who hath seen _him_, hath seen all that man can see of the moral
perfections and spirit of our God. And not with Apostles only, but with
Christ himself, do we abide in the blessed faith of our Father being our
Comforter. “Holy Father, keep, through thine one name, those whom thou
hast given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in
the world I kept them through thy name:—I pray not that thou shouldest
take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the
evil. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” Here Christ
prays to God the FATHER to sanctify the spirits of the disciples, when
_he_ should be no more with them to instruct and keep them. Now
Sanctification is assigned by Trinitarians to the Holy Spirit as his
peculiar office. What then can be more clear than that the Holy Spirit
is the Spirit of our Father in communication with his children, and that
this was the Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth, a portion of the true
spirit of God, which the Christ prayed his Father to communicate to his
darkened disciples,—to take away the Jewish veil from their hearts, and
to guide them into the blessed light of the pure gospel!

The Apostles pray to the Father to be a GUIDE[535] and COMFORTER[536]:
Jesus Christ prays to the Father to be a Sanctifier and Enlightener;
these are the works, and _the only works_, ascribed by Trinitarians to
the Holy Spirit. No reason has been offered in the present Controversy
for the necessity of a third person in the Godhead to be the agent of
these operations; nowhere in orthodox theology have I been able to find
a reason: I respectfully invite the attention of our opponents to this
neglected point. Let them not mistake our demand. We do not deny that
the works of the Holy Spirit can be done by God alone: but we ask for a
reason why God our Father is not sufficient for these things. Until this
question is satisfactorily answered, it must be evident that the
Trinitarian Theology is entirely arbitrary.

It is not a little remarkable that Bishop Sherlock, in attempting to
prove that the Holy Spirit performs the work of the Gospel _within_ the
mind, by the very texts that he himself adduces identifies this Holy
Spirit with the Spirit of God our Father; “No man can come unto me,
except the Father which hath sent me, draw him.” “No man can come unto
me, except it were given unto him of my Father.” “He that is of God,
heareth God’s word.”[537]

There was only one of the operations ascribed to the Holy Spirit by the
Lecturer in Christ Church, to which I could not give my assent. We were
told that the Holy Spirit interpreted the Scriptures to all true
believers. I believe that some portion of the Spirit of God is in every
man who loves the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. I believe that every
one who does His will, knows of the doctrine whether it is of God.
Morally and spiritually, I do believe that the Spirit of God is still a
witness to the truth of Christ. The Spirit of the Father was in Christ,
and to those who love him and keep his commandments the Father still
cometh, and maketh His abode with them. And so far we know that we are
of the truth, because we love and are partakers of the Spirit that dwelt
in Jesus. But if any man presumes to extend this sympathy with the
Spirit of the Christ from moral to _controverted_ truth, and to pretend
that he is not only spiritually but intellectually instructed, so that
he has not only a living faith, but a true creed, we abandon him to his
conviction, satisfied that however sincere, it is unscriptural and a
delusion. How can men persuade themselves that it is humble, that it is
Christian, that it is in the spirit of a modest self-knowledge, to
pretend to this intellectual infallibility, that God not only inspires
the holiness of their wills, but protects their judgment from all error?
When we ask those who tell us that only _their_ creeds can save, what
infallible interpreter preserves _them_ from all doctrinal error, they
do not scruple to proclaim that the Spirit of God is their instructer in
the controverted tenets of theology.[538] Now we only ask how this can
be made clear either to other men, or to themselves? Have they alone
sincere convictions on these subjects? Have they alone sought the truth
with the toils and prayers of earnest and humble minds? Have they alone
emptied themselves of all prejudice, and desired only the pure light
from God? Have they alone put worldly considerations from their hearts,
and left all things that they might follow Christ? What evidence is
there in their position, or in their sacrifices, that only the Spirit of
God can be their guide, for that they are manifestly self-devoted to the
cause of truth? Are _they_ the meek adherents to persecuted principle,
so that against the outward storm nothing short of the inward witness of
the Spirit can be their omnipotent supports? Do they alone give evidence
by the scorn and insult which they cheerfully bear for Christ’s sake and
the gospel’s, that they must be taught of God, for that no men could
endure this social persecution unless God was with them? Ah, my friends,
does it become the followers of popular opinions to turn to the
persecuted, and say, _we_ who float upon the world’s favour, we who have
no sacrifices to bear for conscience’ sake, we to whom godliness is a
present income (πορον) of all that men most love—we give evidence of
being supported through all this peace and popularity by the Holy
Spirit—but _you_, whom we persecute and scorn, you whom we lecture and
libel, you who have to bear upon your inmost hearts the coarse friction
of intolerance and of rude fanaticism, you, though you have to endure
all this, give no evidence that your convictions of Christ and your
faith in God are dear unto you,—you are voluntary sufferers, and the
distresses of your position, which we shall aggravate in every way we
can, are no proof that you stand the rude peltings of the pitiless
storm, only because you dare not abandon conviction, or turn away from
what you believe to be the light of God within you? I ask can any thing
surpass the unmitigated Popery of all this, except its unmitigated
cruelty and injustice? How is it that the Minister of a state religion,
the preacher of popular creeds, whose lightest words raise echoes of
assent—who gets the support and sympathy of crouds on far easier terms
than others get bare toleration and existence, can so remove from him
all self-knowledge and mercy, as to have the heart to tell the man whom
he persecutes, _we_ who have every thing to gain from our religion and
nothing to lose, give evidence of being supported through all this ease
and triumph by the Spirit of God, but you, who in this world have every
thing to lose by your religion, and nothing to gain, give no evidence of
having the Spirit of Truth, and are lovers of your own selves more than
of Conscience and of God?[539] We suspect them not, God forbid we
should, of being immorally tempted and biassed, and with a true
sincerity we declare that we have no sympathy whatever with the
ungenerous vulgarity of such a charge,—but at the same time, they ought
to be aware, and if they were truly generous in their turn they would be
aware, that all the _outward_ marks by which men may judge of the
sincerity of convictions, and the strength of inward reliances, and
allegiance to God, are upon _us_, not upon them.

The other offices assigned to the Holy Spirit besides that of being an
infallible interpreter to the orthodox, were the following:—to bring our
souls into sympathy and union with the Spirit of Jesus—to draw us by
spiritual affinities unto the Christ; to sanctify our nature through
communion with the holy One, cleansing the temple of the spiritual God;
to govern our moral being, and supply the diviner impulses that lift us
to imperishable things, and teach us to love and to pray aright; and to
give us through the spiritual witness within ourselves, a pledge and
earnest of the loving purpose of God, and of the glory that
remaineth.—Must we indeed renounce these connexions of our spirits with
the Spirit of our God, unless mechanically settling the distribution of
offices, we receive these influences through the departmental
arrangements of the Trinitarian Theology? Will God our Father not come
to us and make His abode with us, if we are unfortunate enough to find
no evidence in Scripture for a third infinite Mind associated with him,
and carry up to Him the unbroken sum of our love, our faith, our
worship, and our prayers? Will He reject us only because we pour out our
all before Him, and knowing Him to be all-sufficient, feel our derived
spirits to be at every moment within the shelter of His parental
presence?—And yet, if the Trinitarians were right, if only a believer in
a tri-personal God could hold these spiritual connexions with the source
of all good, the fountain head of all holiness and hope, if these were
the only conditions on which our souls could feel life from above—then
should we become the most grateful, the most devoted, the most
submissive of their disciples—we would entreat them to show us the way
of knowledge, that we might ascend unto the hill of the Lord, and stand
in His holy place,—and to lift up for us, in mercy, the everlasting
doors of our darkened hearts, that the King of Glory might come in;—and
we would flee from our Unitarianism as we should from Atheism, for it
would be Atheism if it closed our access to the Spirit of God.

But, though not fond of speaking personally of religious experiences, we
do declare, and we do know, that the spirit of man may hold communion
with the Spirit of our Father. Every impulse after holiness is the
Spirit of God. Every “sighing that cannot be uttered” after the pure,
the perfect, and the good, is the Spirit of God. Every devotion of our
souls to things unseen and eternal, when solicited by things seen and
temporal, is of the Spirit of God. Every dictate of Duty is the spirit
of God. Every answer to the prayer of a pure heart is the spirit of God.
Every movement of disinterested love is the spirit of God. Every
self-sacrifice for the sake of justice or of mercy is made in the
strength of the Spirit of God. Every inward hope in this world’s
darkness, and undying trust amid this world’s deaths, is an inspiration
from Him who is a very present help in the time of trouble, a spiritual
intimation from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning. The spirit that conforms itself to the will
of God, that removes from it whatever is alien to His nature, that puts
away the defiling breath of the passions, that seeks Him by prayer, by
efforts of duty, by struggles of penitence, by resistance to all sin, by
self-purification and constant converse with His image in the Christ,
that spirit mirrors more and more of the glory of God, feels more and
more His power and peace within the soul, and receives of His fulness,
and grows in His likeness, throughout eternity.

If there are any to whom all this appears visionary, and who charge the
religious mind with mysticism,—we are ready to bear our share of that
charge; for thus far we confess ourselves to be Mystics. Yet, so far are
we from holding it to be Mysticism, that we are confident that nothing
which sense perceives, or thought takes in, is so real, so enduring, so
full of life, as this spiritual and imperishable connexion of the soul
of man with the Spirit of God. This connexion, whatever may have been
the inspiration of peculiar times, we now regard as part of the
established providence and operations of our Father’s Spirit. He gives
of His Spirit, to all who observe the conditions on which He has
promised to pour out His Spirit upon them. No pure mind ever sought Him
in vain. No erring heart ever turned to Him in penitence, and found no
peace. Whenever our holier nature awakes to earnest action, God enters
into the soul. Whenever prayer purifies our desires, and rectifies our
estimates, and places great realities in spiritual lights, God is
present with us. Every effort to sink our imperfections, and to feel
purely, places us within the affinities of His Holy Spirit. There is no
miracle in this. God reveals himself to the spirit that assimilates
itself to Him, and seeks Him by growing like to Him. There are no limits
to those spiritual communications. He that asketh receiveth; he that
seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it is opened. This is of God’s
grace; not now of miracle, but of nature. We are His children, and in
proportion as we love Him purely, and follow after Him, He reveals
Himself to us. Revealing himself through our spirit, He abides with us
for ever. Imaged within us in juster proportions, as we reject impurity,
and impose the harmony of His will upon all our desires, He guides us
into all truth, and causes us to feel within, the blessed intimations of
His sympathizing Spirit. Correcting our false estimates, and fixing our
trusts upon His own great realities, He comforts us amid the shadows of
Time and Death, whilst we repose upon a world that cannot be moved, and
rely upon the faithfulness of God.

Jesus Christ is our most perfect image of the Spiritual Father. He
developes within us the ideas that are akin to God. He brings us through
sympathy with himself within the affinities of the Holy Spirit, for God
was with him. By the baptism of ever fresh penitence, and still fresher
purity, he prepares us for the higher baptism of the Holy Spirit, and of
fire. We grow in light as we grow in purity. If we keep holy the Temple
of the Spirit it abides with us, and, doing His will, we know of the
doctrine whether it be of God. The soul that quenches not the Spirit,
that suffers no intimation from God to pass unheeded, that looks upon
the face of Christ, and reads in characters of blended grace and truth
the mind of the Father, is continually born again, and again, into new
and still newer light, for the kingdom of heaven is a reaching forth
unto things that are before; and he that is in Christ Jesus has within
him a spring of life, and is ever a New Creature. And he is ever nearest
to God who through purity and prayer has disposed his own spirit to
receive light from the Holy Spirit of God, and waits and watches for
fresh communications from His unexhausted Christ.

Were another great Teacher to appear amongst us, were another Christ to
come to us, and apart from the narrow technicalities of system, to
unfold sublime and quickening views of the moral and spiritual world,
where might we expect to find the kindred minds, that would most
instantly recognize the voice of the Divinity, and upon whose ready
sympathies the heavenly words would fall like sparks upon the fuel?
Perhaps those who best understood what it is “to be born again” might
not be of the number of the learned, the instructed, the Masters in
Israel. It is certain that they would not be found among the adherents
of unchanging systems—the Pharisees of the faith, who think that they
_already_ possess the absolute Truth imprisoned in creeds—and expect no
new light to break forth upon their souls. The wind bloweth where it
listeth—nevertheless its course is not uncontrolled—it has laws though
we know them not—and where would the Spirit of God list to blow, if it
was now breathing from the lips of some inspired man,—into what hearts
would it find its way, and fan the latent affinities into the flame of
spiritual life? Might it not again pass by the College of the learned,
and the Temple of the Priest, and descend in living fire upon the poor
man’s soul? All that we can do is to look out for light—to expect it—to
keep near through prayer and inward communion to Him who is its
Fountain—to have the inward sentiments pure, the place of the Spirit
unsoiled, that if light should come into the world, it may not reject us
as unworthy, finding no mirror for itself in our stained souls—and above
all, never to be possessed with that infatuation of confidence, that
blindness of sufficiency, that self-idolatry of the creature, which
looks for no regeneration to descend upon it—and ignorant of its
poverty, its error, and its want, asks with the young Ruler, “what lack
I yet,” or with Nicodemus, “How can a man be born again?” We may be born
again, and again, if we will only lay ourselves out for it. The light
will come if it is looked for. It will not open the closed eye that
seeks no more illumination, but it will fall upon every expecting
spirit. The only essential condition of being born again, is that the
sincere heart, listening to God within, and reading the mind of His
Spirit in Christ his image, remove from itself every moral
disqualification, and lie in wait for light and truth. Wherever they are
found, and whatever be their creed, the Spirit of God “_listeth_” to
blow upon such minds.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture IX.

Footnote 524:

See Forrest on the origin and progress of the Trinitarian Theology, p.
40.

Footnote 525:

See the Rev. F. Ould’s dedication of his Lecture.

Footnote 526:

Burton, Theol. Works, vol. ii. 2nd part, p. 16.

Footnote 527:

Burton, p. 21.

Footnote 528:

“The deity and personality of the Holy Spirit,” pp. 20-23.

Footnote 529:

“And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the
Spirit, because it maketh intercession for the Saints, according to
_the will_ of God.”—Rom. viii. 27.

Footnote 530:

“It is said that God has promised his Spirit to those who ask for it.
But the gift of the SPIRIT, that _unction_ of which St. John speaks
(probably in allusion to the anointment of the Hebrew priests, the
interpreters of the Old Law), was not intended as a check but as a
GUIDE to the rational mind of man. ‘He will _guide_ you into all the
truth,’ namely of the simple Gospel. The Divine Spirit of TRUTH has
been promised to sincere Christians, to guide them into all that
concerns their moral safety. The two SPIRITS—the Spirit (i. e. the
mind, so we may call it without irreverence) of God, and the spirit of
man, though infinitely apart from each other in their nature, are
clearly represented by St. Paul as analogous (I might say _akin_) to
each other. Nor could it be otherwise, since the one is the
fountain-head of reason, the other a derived stream. ‘Likewise the
Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should
pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us
(with sighs not expressed in words);’ i. e. the divine impulse after
holiness which is in us, makes us sigh for what we cannot express: but
God, who gives us that Spirit, knows what it is we wish
for.”—_Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy, by the Rev. J. B. White._

Footnote 531:

See the Rev. Mr. Buddicom’s Lecture.

Footnote 532:

The Rev. H. M‘Neile.

Footnote 533:

The Rev. H. M‘Neile’s Lecture.

Footnote 534:

2 Thess. ii. 16.

Footnote 535:

1 Thes. iii. 11.

Footnote 536:

2 Thes. ii. 16.

Footnote 537:

Sacred Classics. Sermons on the Holy Spirit, p. 161. I have lately
read this volume carefully, in the hope of finding some definite
statement of argument for the Trinitarian Theology on this subject,
but in vain.

Footnote 538:

See the Rev. J. E. Bates’ Lecture, and the Preface to the Rev.
Fielding Ould’s.

Footnote 539:

See the Lecture of the Rev. D. James, and indeed the whole tone and
spirit of the Trinitarian Course. Mr. James declared that we denied
the personality of the Holy Spirit, only because we had never _felt_
his operations.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE X.

CREEDS THE FOES OF HEAVENLY FAITH; THE ALLIES OF WORLDLY POLICY.

BY REV. HENRY GILES.

“LET EVERY MAN BE FULLY PERSUADED IN HIS OWN MIND.”—
_Rom._ xiv. 5.

The essential spirit of the religious revolution which in the 16th
century shook Europe and its thrones, was resistance to ecclesiastical
authority. When Luther burned the Pope’s bull, in Wirtemberg, in one act
pregnant with meaning and with consequences, he broke the spell which
had chained the minds of men for a thousand years, and spread its
fascination over the whole space of Christendom. That single act was a
virtual denial that any church, however high in pretension, however
venerable in institutions, however universal in dominion, however mighty
in power, had a right to enslave his intellect or to silence his
conscience. The English martyr, when ready to be offered up, boasted to
his fellow-sufferer that they would that day kindle such a flame in
England as should never be put out; but the blaze of a piece of
parchment in the hand of the German reformer, was a light far more
significant and impressive—a light at which thousands started from their
slumbers, and although it has often since flickered and been clouded, it
does yet, and ever will, point the way to mental and religious freedom.
Luther and the other reformers, objected to the church of Rome, the
usurpation of unjust authority, and the establishment of a false
standard in faith and practice: they objected to her that she claimed a
dominion over the souls of men which God alone can hold; and they object
that she set aside the supremacy of Christ by encumbering his gospel
with her own traditions. Not alone for alleged errors in doctrine, but
for this error in the very root and foundation of her constitution, they
separated from her communion, and protested against her jurisdiction.
They declared the Bible to be the only ground of a Christian’s faith—the
only guide of his religious convictions, and they claimed for themselves
the right of private judgment and of individual interpretation. We make
the same declaration and assert the same claim, and we neither restrict
nor nullify it by creed, catechism or confession, by tests or articles,
by pains or penalties. Modern Protestant churches, like the reformers,
speak proudly of religious liberty, but like the reformers also, it is a
liberty they are very unwilling to share—a liberty for themselves and
not for others: without claiming infallibility in name, they assume it
in reality; and without giving, as Rome does, the promise of unerring
guidance, they aim at an authority as despotic, and would wrest a
submission as slavish.

The energetic maxim of Chillingworth, “The Bible and the Bible alone is
the religion of Protestants,” is ever and ever repeated even by those
who are pledged to find in it the Athanasian creed and the thirty-nine
articles, and by others who are compelled to extract out of it the
Westminster confession and the longer catechism. With a zeal that never
grows fatigued, it is translated in every tongue and circulated in every
nation; nay, the lisping child must have it to the very letter, and a
fierce war-cry is opened should a school, by selections or omissions,
leave the youthful mind without an opportunity to study the patriarchal
genealogies, the prophesies of Daniel, or the apocalypse of Saint John.
The wide circulation of the Bible we regard as a great social blessing;
but when it is sometimes asked, whether its indiscriminate reading is
suited to all ages and classes, the very question is taken as an
evidence of popery or infidelity in the proposer. To doubt the
perspicuity of God’s word, it is said, is to doubt the wisdom of God’s
providence. The first object of man in speaking to man, is to be
understood; how much more in God addressing his creatures, and on the
most momentous concerns! The Bible, it is asserted, is so plain that the
child may understand it, that he who runs may read, and that way-faring
men, though fools, shall not err therein. If this be true, it is in
itself the death-blow of creeds, for then they are both unnecessary and
absurd—unnecessary, because the statements can be as clearly, can be as
easily found in the Bible as in the creed; absurd, because it is
monstrous folly to attempt making that more distinct which is manifest
enough already. The Bible being, on the orthodox theory of plenary
inspiration, literally the word of God, there is even a degree of
impiety in the presumption of pretending to give a summary of its
meaning in human fabrications, whether from Trent or Augsburgh, from the
palace of the Lateran or the hall of Westminster.

That simplicity is a characteristic of the Bible, at least in its main
tendency, I cordially admit; it is the especial quality of the gospel. I
could desire no better test by which to try the value of creeds. If the
evangelists John or Matthew were again to appear on earth, bringing with
them their first simplicity, ignorant of the wrangling disputes, of the
vain scholasticism which have disturbed this world and the church since
they were taken to their rest—if the Athanasian document were put into
their hands, there is nothing in their gospels which enables me to think
they could understand it; if moreover they were told that the whole of
it could be deduced from their writings, I speak in all earnest
solemnity when I say, that at such an assertion I can conceive of them
as no otherwise than utterly bewildered and surprized. Take our Lord’s
sayings and discourses as reported by his evangelists, and contrast them
with the creed we are discussing. With what undisguised simplicity is
God ever spoken of, always presented in some intimate relation to our
duty or his own providence—as an object of worship, of trust, or of
love! Pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in
secret shall reward thee openly. If ye being evil know how to give good
gifts unto your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give
good things to them that ask him. Touch me not for I have not yet
ascended to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Such is
the clear and touching phraseology in which Christ always speaks of God,
and thus gives, not a scholastic dissertation, but a revelation to human
affections. And in the same spirit of simplicity is his own nature also
manifested; he who in all things was meek and lowly in heart, who went
about doing good, and came to seek and save the lost. Astonishing
mysteries indeed has Athanasian theology made out of these plain
statements, having found in them a trinity in unity, and a unity in
trinity; the Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost
uncreate; the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the
Holy Ghost incomprehensible; the Father eternal, the Son eternal, and
the Holy Ghost eternal, and so on; and though each is distinctively
asserted to be uncreated, incomprehensible, and eternal, we are to
believe on pain of eternal damnation, that they are not three eternals,
but one eternal—not three uncreated, but one uncreated—not three
incomprehensibles, but one incomprehensible. Surely of all
incomprehensibles this theological jumble is the most incomprehensible.
If to defy contradiction by the very sublime of absurdity be a safeguard
from refutation, the Athanasian creed must stand eternally unconfuted.
Plausible falsehood, however ingenious, may be stripped of its
sophistries, but there is a certain degree of wild fabrication which may
challenge all the efforts of philosophers and logicians, yet remain as
firm as before in the bulwarks of its impenetrable nonsense. It may be
truly said that these are things on which we cannot reason; most
certainly they are, for they subvert at once all possible principles of
reason and of truth. But the climax of these astounding marvels is, that
we are assured that if we do not hold this Catholic faith, “without
doubt we shall perish everlastingly.” And this precious document, this
compilation of monkish mysteries and scholastic jargon, is set forth as
the accurate definition of the Christian faith—the test of saving belief
or of damnable heresy; this production of crazy or crafty churchmen,
this concentration of hoary absurdities, of bewildered metaphysics, and
of savage bigotries, presumes to utter the judgment of God, and to
launch the thunder of the skies. Beginning with the pride of
infallibility, it closes consistently with a sentence of perdition; and
for this there is pleaded the language of the gospel—language evidently
misinterpreted, as any language must be which would identify the spirit
of Christ with the spirit of Athanasius. So on the ground of two false
assumptions, those who pride themselves in this Athanasian orthodoxy are
privileged to denounce with a safe and quiet conscience perdition on
their heretical brethren. First, it is assumed that when the gospel
says, “He that believeth not,” it must mean, he that believeth not the
three creeds; and, secondly, it is assumed that when the gospel says,
“He that believeth not shall be condemned,” the condemnation implied is
everlasting destruction. This is in the genuine spirit of Church and
Creed Christianity, fencing in a little and a barren paradise with the
brambles and the briars of theological definitions, making holiness and
virtue dependent on ecclesiastical syllogisms, and shutting out all from
heaven who may be compelled to disagree with the doctors of Nice, or the
compilers of our English liturgy, who hold the faith of Milton and
Locke, but cannot be convinced by Bull, Waterland, or Sherlocke. Creeds
pronounce perdition, and Churches hold up Creeds; and ministers come
forth to magnify the glory of these Churches and to maintain the verity
of these Creeds; but men of meek tempers and tolerant hearts seem half
ashamed of their work, and in the effort to soften dogmatical ferocity,
make a vain effort at compromise between their consistency and their
charity. It is all fruitless: the dark and damning malediction is
written on these Creeds with a pen of adamant; the preacher’s feelings
are of no avail, and he is commanded by his system to proclaim them
aloud and afar—to hold them as warrants of eternal death to all who
gainsay or deny them. At the best, orthodox charity, after all
admissions, can only embrace different shades of Trinitarians;
Unitarians must still remain outside the pale of hope; if therefore
condemned we must be, it is of but small importance in what form or on
what theory. To those who are to enter the regions of the lost for ever,
questions on essences and persons, with many other most grave
disquisitions, can signify but little; nor can much consolation be
derived from the reflection, that but a hair’s breadth from the
Unitarian heresy, theology by evasions and distinction might have given
us a refuge in the doctrine of Sabellianism. We are, however, most
gravely told that he who receives not the Athanasian Creed, cannot be
saved—a Creed at which reason, as it was well said, stands aghast, and
Faith itself is half confounded; a Creed, of which it was better said,
that it is alike contrary to common sense, to common arithmetic, and to
common charity.

Were the exposure of the Athanasian formulary the design of this
Lecture, I should feel that I had undertaken a very needless and a very
presumptuous task, needless, because in this age there are few that
attach any importance to it; presumptuous, because, if minds are not
affected by its self-confutation, I have not the vanity to pretend to
any arguments which could shake their convictions. But one can scarcely
suppress a feeling of sorrow and surprise at seeing this document
dragged out for defence in the nineteenth century; this mixture of
monkish metaphysics and scholastic bigotry, a production which
multitudes of the orthodox themselves conspire to repudiate, and of
which many of the best and highest minds in the Church of England have
been most heartily ashamed—of which they desire to be well rid. Were the
defence of such a creed to be taken as a true sign of the times, there
would be cause indeed for pain to think that we had been rolled back
again into the dark ages; but it is not so; such things are rather marks
that show us how far the advancing tide has moved beyond them. In the
course of the present Lecture I desire it to be distinctly understood,
that I oppose creeds in their very principle: it is not alone such as I
think false, but though I believed them true, I would yet oppose their
use. My opposition is directed against the spirit of creeds, and if my
own opinions were attempted to be forced in that form, my opposition
would be the same. I am in this place to maintain a principle, the
principle of intellectual, moral, and Christian freedom, and because
creeds, as I think, are at variance with this, I denounce them. I intend
nothing against individual professors. If I should give them offence, I
have no wrong motive with which to charge myself, and must attribute it
to the necessity of plain speaking on a subject by no means agreeable;
but whether pleasant or not, I have a duty to perform, and I must as far
as my power goes, endeavour to do it honestly and faithfully.

The title of this Lecture is, that creeds are the foes of heavenly
faith, and the allies of worldly policy. It is my object to show that
this accusation is not lightly or unjustly advanced; and in making good
this two-fold charge, the greatest perplexity which attends it, is the
multifarious and abundant evidence whereby it can be established.

I. I proceed first to prove them the foes of heavenly faith.

Creeds disqualify the mind for the pursuit of truth. This is my first
assertion, and I shall establish its correctness in several particulars.
Creeds generate mental apathy and mental dependence, and this is fatal
in the very outset. To a spirit of inquiry there is needed an impulsive
intellectual activity, and to this activity there is needed a desire for
the thing to be attained, and a sense of its importance. There is no
labour without motive, and if in religious belief, the creed has defined
before-hand all that is necessary for my salvation, I have no necessity
to take any more trouble in the matter. If I am to rest on authority at
last, it is just as well for me to be satisfied with it at first—if
after toilsome inquiry, at the peril of my soul’s eternal peace, the
dogmas of the creed are those to which my conclusions must return, I had
better be at once content—if I must believe as the Church believes, if I
must believe as the Creed says I should believe, if I must believe as
the priest declares my hope of heaven requires, if after criticism and
research, long and patient, I must arrive at but one exposition of the
Bible, it is but wisdom to spare myself from such a pressure of useless
labour. But indolence in this case is not merely allowable, it is, in
fact, the safest. If to doubt be danger, and if to disbelieve be sin,
then the curiosity which stimulates examination may lead me into ruin,
whilst implicit submission, that receives all and questions nothing, is
a condition of peaceful security. The incitements to mental labour are
analogous to those to any other sort of labour; it is that one shall be
the richer and the better for it, and that what he acquires he may
justly possess. But, if by independent inquiry I may become morally
poorer and spiritually worse, if I shall have no right to my own
thoughts, and must be despoiled of my convictions, or punished for them,
when I have worked them out with the struggle of every faculty, it is
exceeding folly to risk the misery and irritation of being torn between
my opinion and my creed, conscience forcing me to acquiesce, and reason
compelling me to doubt. This view is no supposition; it is fact.
Submission to Creeds and Churches, is the true cause of that wide spread
moral torpor in every country where Creeds and Churches have dominion.
There is nothing so rare as intelligent, independent religious
conviction; and how can it be otherwise, when each leans upon his
priest, and the priest gives him ready-made opinions, as they were
formed a thousand years ago. There is a general and profound ignorance
of the sources of opinion, the history of opinion, of the philosophy of
opinion, and of the Bible, both in its letter and in its spirit. Speak
to multitudes of religion, in any broad or liberal sense, and it seems
to them as if it were an unknown tongue. To have any chance of
attention, you must use terms which Creeds have sanctified, you must
address them in traditionary phrases, which have the sectarian or
sacerdotal currency. This never could have been had religion been
recommended as a subject of individual and independent study, leaving
the mind free, both in its pursuit and its conclusion. That I have
stated nothing but what fact justifies, I may appeal to any one who has
considered the religious condition of this country, or of Europe
generally, and considered it in every rank of society. I speak not of
the Spaniard, who has not yet rid himself from the palsy of the
Inquisition, who can go from the prostration of the confessional to
scenes of the wildest crime; I speak not of the Italian, that compound
of profaneness and credulity, of sin and devotion, who can bow before an
image, and with the same hand cross himself, by which a minute before he
plunged his stiletto in his fellow-creature’s heart. I speak not of our
own peasantry, who Sunday after Sunday, walk statedly to church or
chapel, and know little more than that they went there and came back
again; I speak not of the fashionable wealthy, who, on this point, are
commonly as ignorant as the boor, and choose religion as they choose
every thing else, as it happens to be the mode; I pass these by, because
it may be said, that pleasure and gaiety leave them no time for study;
but I will refer to multitudes who are esteemed devout and serious
Christians, whose minds passively receive the mould of their teachers,
and to whom religion never presents itself as a system of various
thought and of independent examination. Now, this ignorant apathy has
bad effects, which are not merely negative; and at the risk of
anticipating, I will allude in a few words to one or two of them: it
gives stability to every error and corruption, and holds to them with an
obstinacy, against which wisdom has no power; it is the very soil in
which priestcraft grows darkest and foulest; and the hierarchy in any
age or country has never risen to its full stature of lordliness, until
the people have lain lowest in torpid submission. And, in addition to
this, there is no uncharitableness so inveterate, there is no bigotry so
intolerant, as that which this species of character matures, for as it
is unable to comprehend an opposite opinion, it is equally inadequate
and unwilling to weigh the arguments in its favour, or to estimate the
evidence on which it is maintained. Having no conception of independence
itself, independence in another appears presumption, if not something
worse, and never having imagined that other opinions could possibly be
true except its own, to hold any different could only be explained by
supposing a want of honesty or a want of grace.

I might dwell upon the fear by which Creeds paralyse the faculties of
weak or sensitive natures, by which they deprive them of all power for
calm and deliberate examination, by the fear of being excluded from
their Church, by the fear of being discarded by their friends, by the
fear of being cast into hell, above all these, by the fear of losing the
favour of God, and the friendship of Jesus, and with right and true
minds, this is the greatest of all fears. In the midst of so many
terrors, it is too much to expect that our weak humanity could be
calm,—that it could look with unmoved heart at the appalling indications
of so many and dire threatenings, it is like examining a man on the
terms of his faith, while the officials of persecution are arranging the
faggots or putting screws in the rack. From this topic, disagreeable in
any shape, I pass on, and assert, that Creeds are enemies to truth,
because, by preconception and prejudice, they disqualify the mind to
seek or apprehend it. This is my second, and in this section, my last
position.

The statement of the Church of England respecting the three Creeds, is
this: that they “ought thoroughly to be received and believed, for they
may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.”[540] The
Catholic doctrine, with equal decision, asserts that the Infallibility
of the Romish Church may also be proved by most certain warrants of Holy
Scripture. Suppose then a Church of England Christian with the Bible
before him; he has been previously indoctrinated in the three Creeds,
and these ideas pre-occupying his mind will so far influence his
interpretation. Suppose a Roman Catholic in a like position; he has ever
present to his mind the Infallibility of his Church, and _her_ decisions
must be the limits of _his_ conclusions. Intellectually or morally, no
position can be conceived worse than this for the pursuit or discovery
of truth. The mind is biassed from the first; its calmness and its
candour are subverted, and it is no longer a judge, but a partizan; it
is not to decide on evidence, but, (to use a legal term) to act on the
instruction of its brief. That Creeds have the tendency to distort and
fetter the intellectual workings of the mind, we know from the fact, too
palpable to need proof, that Theologians have always been the most
obstinate in resisting the discoveries of science, and ever the last to
yield. Astronomy, in its glimmerings of scientific truth, was once
Church heresy. A Father of the Church, as it is well known, had
denounced that man as infidel and profane who should dare to assert that
the earth moved round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. On the
other side of this controversy, we have been told that the arts and
sciences have their compendiums as well as religion. It was a most
unfortunate analogy; for how would it have been now with art and
science, had Astronomy been made a Creed at the Council of Nice, and a
confession on Chemistry been compiled by the Westminster divines.
Galileo was pronounced a heretic; and the early Chemists laboured under
strong suspicion of witchcraft. Had we been bound in Astronomy as we are
in Theology, Joshua should be our authority, decisive and irrevocable,
and the calculations of Newton and Laplace should be placed in the index
expurgatorius of Ecclesiastical dogmatism. Even Luther himself, the
author of the greatest of moral revolutions since Christianity, smiled
at the idea that the earth should move round the sun, and said, “that
according to Holy Scripture, Joshua commanded the earth to stand still,
and not the sun.”[541] Had not the progressive energy of human intellect
been stronger, in what a position should we yet have been as to the true
principles of the construction and motion of the universe? Geology as
yet is a scientific heresy; and, to avoid the stigma, orthodox
Geologists have been driven into all modes of eccentric explanation,
some to disjoin the first verse of Genesis from all that follows, and
others to the supposition that a day may mean a thousand years, or if
the speculator needs it, ten thousand or a million. The intellectual
immorality thus occasioned, it is not possible to estimate; for it is a
coarse view of sin to place it altogether in the misdirection of the
passions: certainly, the sins which ever afflicted mankind most, were
the moral perversions of the intellect. And this may be at once
conceived if we have read the history of the Church, and are able to
take a calm and impartial review of its cabals and controversies. I will
not mention here the loss of kindly affections, the loss of charity, the
loss of peace; I merely allude to the immense intellectual waste which
has been occasioned by men setting out on their inquiries with a
foregone conclusion. I shall say nothing on the tomes, enough to make a
library as great as that the Turkish soldier burned, which have been
written to defend the Trinity—I take an example to Protestants more
grateful—I mean, transubstantiation. What was it that for centuries
perpetuated a false and absurd philosophy in Europe? What was it that
made Aristotle the supreme ruler of the Christian Church—not Aristotle,
as he was, the philosoper, but as Churchmen used him, a verbal
quibbler—was it not for the purpose of constructing syllogisms with
orthodox exactness, and by theories on essences, species, forms, and so
forth, to make it evident that under the appearance of bread and wine,
the very God who created the heavens and the earth, and the very man
Christ Jesus who died on Calvary, were virtually present? Go into any
great library, and on this subject alone you may find volumes of which
the very names are too many for memory. Yet, in these there is abundance
of talent, of subtlety, and of acuteness—all in the travail to sustain a
theory. No one can deny, no one will, who knows how equally the Creator
scatters his gifts, that minds of the very highest order were amongst
the schoolmen; yet all these magnificent powers were expended to sustain
one or two absurd positions, enslaving their own intellect, and by their
authority and their influence, enslaving the intellect of Christendom;
and, from the reformation to this hour, there have been the same waste
and perversion of thought. Just consider what tortuous logic, what
wire-drawing ingenuity have been exercised to defend guilt by
imputation, and righteousness by imputation—absurdities as great
morally, as transubstantiation is intellectually. This is the work of
Creeds.

Dissenters are sometimes taunted with want of scholarship. The taunt may
have foundation in fact; perhaps it has, but on what are we to place the
blame? Dissenters, we presume, have a measure of intellect on the
average of other men, and are gifted with as many mental faculties as
those who subscribe the articles of our National Church. God does not
distribute his blessings on the ground of subscription, however
Universities may. The gifts of mind are equal and bountiful like the
beneficence of creation. The same full hand that showers sunlight over
hill and valley, that opens fountains in the rocks, and sows the
wilderness with flowers, without reference to Sect or Church,
impregnates all understandings with the elements of thought, and all
fancies with the germs of beauty. The Dissenter, as the Churchman, hath
eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections. If then this fair
portion of our Maker’s mercy be equally given, whence are we to trace
the want of its proper cultivation? If the orthodox close the
Universities against us by Creeds, draw fast the iron bolt by an iron
theology, take away the key of knowledge, and repulse those that with
all their hearts would enter, place before us tests which, if stupid
enough, we might subscribe without understanding, and if dishonest
enough we might subscribe without believing, but, candidly confessing we
neither understand them nor believe them, therefore refuse to sign
them,—where then is the magnanimity or the generosity which throws in
our teeth, though it were true, that we have not the science of
Cambridge, or the classicality of Oxford. Yet, despite of all
restrictions, Dissent has had a goodly number of noble and cultured
minds—minds able and honest, which, in the hour of need, even the Church
herself was not ashamed to acknowledge, or ashamed to use.

Creeds act as mighty temptations,—as the very Satans of theology;—and
they are not temptations to the covetous and ambitious only, but also to
the weak and good. When sects and Creeds are the standards of
preferment, those with whom preferment is the great object, are made to
add the sin of sanctimonious hypocrisy to that of Ecclesiastical
covetousness and Ecclesiastical ambition. But there are others good in
their own hearts, yet not mighty enough to be martyrs, whom Creeds keep
in a whole life of agony. There are those who entered a religious
community, believing its opinions most enthusiastically, who, by the
further progress of intellect or judgment, may be brought to doubt or
deny them. They are then driven to a desperate alternative, either to
belie their conscience, or to do violence to their hearts. Take the case
of many of the curates and incumbents of the Church of England. Suppose,
that on receiving orders they assented to all the bishop or the Church
prescribed, but that after years of thinking they were compelled to
disbelieve the Athanasian Creed. They are then periodically reading,
with the most serious tones, and from the most solemn place, a statement
of doctrine which they conceive in their souls to be hideous and false,
reading it as the conviction of their own judgments, and as that which
ought to be the saving faith of all men. If the conscience is not
utterly hacknied, if the religious sensibilities are not torn out from
the heart, this must be continually as the torture of the rack. Like all
human faculties, conscience has a limit; beyond a certain point it can
endure no more, and so when bigoted exaction has stretched it to the
last, it must revolt or expire. The alternative in the end is, moral
apathy or theological rebellion—a quiescent hypocrisy, or an open
opposition. But few can brave the contest, and they have no refuge
except a tacit and unwilling submission. Honest men, it may be said,
when they ceased to believe the doctrines they solemnly affirmed, would
renounce them with a denial as public as their profession. It is easy to
say this, but, even for honest men, it is sometimes hard to do it. In
the clerical order especially there are numbers, whose position has been
attained by long study and weary toil—whose very means of life—not to
speak of their station and their friendships—hang upon adherence to the
Creed of their Church. What are these men to do? To dig they are not
able, and to beg they are ashamed. Yet I can easily conceive that many
could abandon rank and friendship, and count them light, in comparison
with their faith, to conscience, that they could take a cell in the
wilderness for their dwelling, quench their thirst at the running
stream, and seek their food on the briar and the bramble, sooner than be
false to their convictions, and do dishonour to the integrity of their
souls. But it may be, that others with themselves are to suffer,—those
whose lives are bound up in their lives,—those to whom they are the only
earthly support and refuge, the wife, the child, the aged father, or the
widowed mother,—whom to cast on the friendless world, were worse than a
thousand martyrdoms. Think, then, of the poor curate of the Church of
England, or the humble incumbent, who has grown long into life, with
claims most pressing multiplying around him—one who once out of his
pulpit knows not where to turn for the bread which his children
crave—and we cannot judge harshly or uncharitably, if the power of his
affections is too strong for the stern demands of duty. I know there
have been those who could commit father, and mother, and wife, and
children, to that good Provider who feedeth the raven and sheltereth the
nest of the sparrow; who could speak the truth and take the
consequences;—I trust there are those yet in the world who could do the
same; but in this or any other age, martyrs must be few, and the spirit
of martyrdom rare. We blame not too severely those who have not the
highest courage of religious heroism, but we may condemn with honest
indignation those institutions that by fencing their position with
Creeds and Articles, compel them to be hypocrites. I do not apply these
assertions to members or ministers of the Church of England, or other
Churches, individually, but any one who has studied the history of
religion, or watched the tendency of institutions, knows that in the
English Establishment, in the Romish, in all establishments that have
been narrowly restrictive, the hypocrisy of ambition, or the hypocrisy
of fear, has been deeply and abundantly nourished.

The Church does not deny a small amount of liberty—no Church can,—it
will therefore allow you to read the Bible, if you desire it, but you
must find nothing therein but what the Church proposes. In the study of
the Sacred text, you must have always before your eyes the three Creeds
and the thirty-nine Articles; find what these prescribe, and it is all
the better for your peace and comfort; miss them, and you are open to
social and spiritual condemnation. Churches which dictate creeds, use
words without meaning, when they say, that you may read the Bible, for
they tell you also, at the commencement, what you ought to find in the
Bible. I shall give an illustration here of my meaning, by an extract
from one of the Oxford Tract writers:—I know well that some object to
these writers, but so far as I have been able to study the subject—and I
have read, attentively or casually, the whole of what are called the
Oxford Tracts,—I think their statements and their doctrines are entirely
in the spirit of their system, and in most exact consistency with their
asseverations and their Creed. There is no medium; we require an
infallible tribunal, or we must have a free judgment; but the
authorities of the English Establishment will give us neither; for with
that we must encounter the twofold endurance of an erring Church and an
enslaved understanding. I think, therefore, the Oxford doctors in most
perfect consistency with their profession; and thus believing, I quote
the following passage, illustrative of these writers, and of the spirit
of Ecclesiastical authority in general. It is a portion of a dialogue
between a minister and his parishioner. Not to spoil the dramatic effect
of it, I shall give you a little more than absolutely belongs to my
subject. Thus speaks the Parishioner to the Pastor:—“My good mother,
said he, not long before her death, said to me very earnestly, My dear
Richard, observe my words: never dare to trifle with God Almighty. By
this I understood her to mean, that in all religious actions we ought to
be very _awful_, and seek nothing but what is right and true. And I knew
she had always disapproved of people’s saying, as they commonly do, that
it little matters what a man’s religion is, if he is but sincere, and
that one opinion, or one place of worship, is as good as another. To
say, or think, or act so, she used to call ‘trifling with God’s truth;’
and do you not think so, (addressing himself to me,) that she was right?

“Indeed I do, said I.

“And, he said, I was very much confirmed in these opinions by constantly
reading a very wise, and as I may say to you, a precious book, which a
gentleman gave me some years ago, whom I met by chance as I was going to
see my father, in the infirmary. It is called, ‘A Selection from Bishop
Wilson’s Works,’ and there are many places which show what his opinions
were on this subject, and I suppose, Sir, there can be no doubt, that
Bishop Wilson was a man of extraordinary wisdom and piety. Then, after a
slight remark from his interlocutor, he observes, And what Bishop Wilson
says is this, or to this effect, that to reject the government of
bishops is to reject the ordinance of God. Having mentioned some
controversy he had with a Dissenter, he observes, it seemed to me (and I
told the man so,) like going round and round in a wheel, to say, that if
he is God’s minister, he preaches what is good, and if he preaches what
is good, he is God’s minister; for still the question would be, what is
right or good? And some would say one thing, and some another; and some
would say, there is nothing good or right in itself, but only as it
seems most expedient to every person for the time being. So, for my own
satisfaction, and hoping for God’s blessing on my future endeavours, I
resolved to search the matter out for myself, as well as I could. My
plan was this: First to see what was said on the subject in the Church
Prayer Book, and then to compare this with the Scriptures. If, after
all, I could not satisfy myself, I should have taken the liberty of
consulting you, Sir, &c. Yours, replied this Rev. instructor to his
prudent catechuman, was a good plan.”

This passage contains the whole spirit of Creeds and Churches. Take the
Prayer Book with you, keep the fear of the bishop before your eyes, and
walk reverently in the way of the Articles. Then read the Scriptures if
you will, but read them to show that all this is Holy Writ.

Creeds are, further, at enmity with truth, because they resist its
development, and embarrass its progression. The world could never have
advanced beyond a fixed point, had it been governed by Churchmen, in the
true Church spirit. For what is it that Creed-makers so insanely
attempt? They attempt what is alike inconsistent with the glory of truth
and the nature of man. Truth is infinite, like its author, and they
would confine it within the limits of the Nicene and Athanasian
formularies. Truth is eternal and progressive, but Creeds would swear us
to the worst barbarisms of the worst ages. Truth is discovered and
carried onward by the independent working of free and various minds, but
Creeds would reduce all to an apathetic uniformity; and had not truth
been greater than Creeds, all that has been done for religion and
science, would now be in eternal silence. Creeds not only thus retard
the progress of Truth, by the sanction of authority, by the influence of
prejudice, by the tenacity of habit; but give errors all but
immortality. Creeds are foes to whatever is most heavenly in our nature;
to conscience, in its rectitude, and to charity in its gentleness; to
conscience by an utter perversion of the moral sense, making that to be
guilt which is not guilt, and giving merit to that which deserves none,
making it righteous to believe one proposition, and sinful to doubt
another, thus creating a factitious vice, and as often denying the
evidence of real virtue; to charity, also, Creeds, I have said, are
foes, and such they are by bitter exclusiveness, by wrong terms of
communion and brotherhood, by dissension, by enmities and contentions,
and by hatred in all its most odious shapes.

Creeds have failed in all the objects for which it is pretended they
were made, and they have infinitely multiplied the evils against which
it is pretended they are the guards. They are needful, it is said, for
the preservation of the Faith, and instead of preserving the Faith, they
have provoked the wildest unbelief; they are required, it is argued, as
bonds of unity, and instead of this they have bred divisions and
heresies without number; they are means, some will go so far as to say,
of maintaining Christian peace, and instead of this they have rioted in
wars and persecutions the most inhuman and the most sanguinary. The
history of religion shows that unbelief is never so prevalent as when
the Creed is most rigid. The countries and the times in which
Theological ingenuity left least scope for the free play of intellect,
have always been the country and times, when, under the outward guise of
a uniform faith, there has been the most absolute contempt for the
popular religion, as well as for Christianity in general. For the proof
of this need I refer to the French Church, and the withering scepticism
which it nurtured; the Spanish Church; the Italian Church; and to
sustain the same principle we might likewise accumulate heaps of
evidence from the Protestant Churches. As to heresies, the case is still
more clear. One heresy may have called forth a Creed, but one Creed has
produced a thousand heresies; and Creed-makers, when they imagined their
work complete, to their sorrow have found it was but merely commenced.
The history of heresies would be at once humiliating and instructive. In
all varieties we have them on every point in religion, and on all that
has connection with it; on the nature of God. Men not satisfied with a
simple trust, must speculate on the Divine Being—must ascertain whether
he was essentially one, or numerically divided; Churchmen must define,
and after much labour we have such a document as the Athanasian Creed,
and such a doctrine as the Athanasian Trinity. On the nature of Christ,
we have the same subtleizing process; we are tossed between Arius and
Athanasius, and having got clear of these, we are again to be bandied
between Nestorius and Eutychus, and to determine whether Christ’s
godhead and manhood were so united as to make one nature, or so divided
as to constitute two natures; whether his divinity was not instead of a
human soul, or in what relation his human soul stood to his divinity;
whether he had one will or two wills; whether his death was a
substitution or not; whether it was for the elect only, or for the whole
race of man universally. On the Church; what its constitution, what its
extent, what its authority; is it fallible or infallible; and if
infallible, where does that infallibility rest; in the Pope, in a
Council, in both together; in a congregation, or in every individual
Christian? On the Sacraments; are there two or seven; what is their
nature and efficacy; does baptism cleanse from original sin, or does it
not; is it necessary to salvation or not? Roman Catholics affirm both,
and so do the Oxford Tract writers. Is it to be consequent on personal
belief or not; is it to be administered to infants, or to persons of
mature years, and to be by immersion or by sprinkling? Again, we have a
whole crowd of divisions and heresies on the Lord’s Supper; are the
elements actually changed into the substance of Christ, or is Christ
merely present along with them, or is he spiritually, but not
personally, present; is it a rite mystically effective, or is it merely
commemorative? All these questions have been sources of endless division
of opinion; even at the present hour, the Oxford divines teach a
doctrine concerning the Eucharist, which it requires marvellous
perspicacity to distinguish from transubstantiation, while the
Calvinistic evangelicals maintain views which might content the very
lowest sacramentarian. But why speak of Creeds and Articles as means of
religious unity, when the Church of England herself affords us the means
of giving such assertion a flat denial? Within her pale, she has had men
of all and opposite opinions—Arminian and Calvinist, Unitarian and
Tritheist—every possible hue that orthodoxy could assume. Paley smiles
at the idea, as one of most grotesque absurdity, that men should be
thought to believe the articles they sign; they are, according to his
morality, mere articles of peace, intended to exclude no one but Papists
and Anabaptists. If this be true, a man might, as an able writer on
non-conformity says, take a benefice with a good conscience from the
Grand Turk. Nay, not to speak of believing the Articles, we have heard
it asserted, in connection with the Universities, that the youthful
subscribers are not supposed to understand them, or in some cases even
to have read them. The Church of England is perhaps wise in not pushing
matters too far, for in her former efforts to force uniformity, she lost
the best of her sons by thousands; an event that she has cause to regret
to the latest hour of her existence, and for which America should bless
her for ever. The distinction between essentials and non-essentials, is
one of the most quibbling of Theological vanities. Every one knows that
each sect has its essentials and non-essentials, according to the
compass of its Creed, some many and some few: with the Roman Catholic,
Transubstantiation is as essential as the Trinity; he condemns the
orthodox Protestant to perdition for not holding one as well as the
other, whilst both combine to pass sentence on the unfortunate Unitarian
who can receive neither. Again, I assert the distinction is petty and
quibbling, for who is to fix it, where is it to stop; who is to decide
it, and what are to be grounds of the decision? All things are important
to us, as they bear relation to our conscience or our convictions; one
man eateth only herbs, another eateth all things; one man esteemeth one
day above another, another esteemeth every day alike: let every man be
persuaded in his own mind; that is the Apostle’s view of the subject,
and that is the true, the safe, the charitable one. Protestantism has
not lessened or softened the number or the inveteracy of religious
divisions infinitely more perplexed than Romanism in her views of
religious authority, she has given importance to doctrines which the
Church under that system scarcely noticed: such as grace,
predestination, and other similar disputed theories: thus the sting of
controversy has been added to topics that were before sufficiently
repulsive in their dry and technical abstruseness. But it is pitiful, it
is humiliating, not merely to our common Christianity, but to our common
human nature, to see the arrogant assumption with which puny men decree
what their brothers are to believe, now and in all future times, tying
down the mind that should be free as heaven, as it is as progressive as
it is eternal: putting themselves on the throne of God, and dealing
judgment where he deals mercy. The minuteness of theological definition
has surpassed all other efforts of human ingenuity, but it has not alone
deadened the freedom of intellect, but also injured its honesty. On the
Trinity, more especially, heresy has ever been treading closely on
orthodoxy, “until, after revolving round the theological circle,” as
Gibbon says, “we are surprised to find that the Sabellian ends where the
Ebionite had began.” Each theological speculator has his own Trinity,
his own exposition of the Athanasian mystery, until amidst the whirl of
dogmatical contradictions, the mind grows giddy, and knows not where to
rest. The Church of England, as I have observed before, has all systems
between the extremes of Sherlock’s Tritheism and South’s Sabellianism:
between the three infinite minds of the one, and the three _somewhats_
of the other. The ancient Christians afforded full occasion for the
caustic description which Gibbon gives of their disputes, and the modern
Christians have not grown wiser, or learned better. “The Greek word” he
says, “which was chosen to represent this mysterious resemblance, bears
so close an affinity to the orthodox symbol, that the profane of every
age derided the furious contests which the difference of a single
diphthong excited between the Homoousians and the Homoisians. As it
frequently happens that sounds and characters which approach nearest
each other, accidentally represent the most opposite ideas, the
observation would be itself ridiculous, if it were possible to mark any
sensible difference between the doctrine of the Semiarians, as they were
improperly styled, and that of the Catholics themselves. The Bishop of
Poictiers, who in his Phrygian exile, very wisely aimed at a coalition
of parties, endeavours to prove, that by a pious and faithful
interpretation, the Homoousian may be reduced to a consubstantial sense.
Yet he confesses that the word has a dark and suspicious aspect; and, as
if darkness were congenial to theological disputes, “the Semiarians who
advanced to the doors of the Church, assailed them with the most
unrelenting fury.” If it be said, that the Creeds are not the creators
of divisions, but that divisions are the creators of Creeds, I admit
that they act and react on each other. If they create not the
differences which they make, they give them all their bitterness. If it
be said, that independently of Creeds, there would still be endless
variety of private opinions, I grant it; I go further, and say, it were
most desirable there should be such divisions. It is Creeds that
infuriate religion, and turns dissent into dissension. A man who felt he
could form his opinion in freedom, and hold it in peace, would never
persecute another; would never hate another; would never pretend
authority over another; he would give the liberty he used. It is the
authority which Creeds pretend, that constitute one of their greatest
evils. The ancient Church then had Creeds in plenty, but no unity; the
Reformed Churches are in the same position. If it be asserted they have
agreement in essentials, I refer to what I have already said on this
point; but if it be maintained that their difference is only in name,
then, I say, the matter becomes worse, and plainly shows that Creeds,
out of small disputes, can cause gigantic evils. Nothing could be more
bitter than the Sacramentarian Controversy amongst the Reformers;
nothing could be more vile than the language with which they assailed
each other; nothing more furious than the invectives with which they
pelted one another. Each would fix on his opponent what he did not
believe himself; and yet there occasionally peeps out a glimmer, that
they had some sense of their inconsistency. “It is of great importance,”
says Calvin, in writing to Melancthon, ”that the least suspicion of the
divisions that are among ourselves pass not to future ages; for it is
ridiculous beyond all things that can be imagined, that after we have
broken off from the whole world, we should so little agree among
ourselves since the beginning of the Reformation.” The charity of Calvin
was not equal to his discretion, as we may see by this extract.

“Honour, glory, and riches,” says he to the Marquis de Poët, “shall be
the reward of your pains; but, above all, do not fail to rid the country
of those zealous scoundrels who stir up the people to revolt against us.
Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael
Servetus, the Spaniard.”

In the same spirit is the language of Austin, who was Calvin’s master,
not only in his doctrine, but also in his zeal. “O, you Arian heretic,”
he says, “the thief knew him when he hung upon the cross; the Jews
feared him when he rose from the dead; and you treat him with contempt,
now he is reigning in heaven. Take care, beloved, of the Arian
pestilence!” (Quoted from _Robinson’s Ecclesiastical Researches_, pp.
348, and 181.)

Division and heresy are, in truth, innumerable, and the ideas of
stemming them by Creeds, is to imitate the peasant standing on the
river’s bank, and waiting until it should have all flowed by. “One
doctor of the Lutheran Church,” says Robert Robinson, of Cambridge,
“hath given a comment on heresy and schism, and hath inserted no less
than six hundred and thirty-two sorts of heretics, heresiarchs, and
schismatics, diversified as the birds of heaven, and agreeing only in
one single point, the crime of not staying in what is called the
Church.”

I have now shown that Creeds did not promote unity in the ancient
Church; that they did not promote it in the Roman Church; that they did
not promote it in the Reformed Church; that in the present day they do
not promote it in any of the Protestant Churches; not to allude again to
our own Establishment; to many in the Scotch Church, they are a dead
letter; they are entirely so in the French and German Churches; and in
the Genevese Church, the very school where blackest Calvinism was
fabricated, the arena where the stern persecutor burned Servetus,
Calvin’s spirit is extinct, and his creed repealed. I have shown, then,
that they never produced unity, and I believe the most intrepid
Ecclesiastic will not affirm they have been favourable to Christian
peace. Turn to the page of history; look abroad over the face of the
world, and you have lamentable evidence of the charge. Creeds have
broken the peace of Christendom, and given unwonted fury to all its
strifes; Controversies have arisen without number, and have been
maintained with fanatic zeal, fury, and detestation. What shame should
the opposite conduct of Philosophers flash in the face of
theologians,—men, who in quietness pursued their own studies, and left
their results for the progressive amelioration of their species—whilst
the janglings of Churchmen, wringing through every age, have been empty
of all things but their enmity. Why is it, that we in this hour are not
more profitably engaged,—why is it, that we are not rather seeking out
the woes that crush down humanity, and joining forces to remove
them,—why is it with so much of what is positive to be done, so much of
wretchedness to relieve, so much sin to remove, so many solemn claims on
all sides of us, that when we think of it, we feel as if this were the
veriest trifling; why are we thus in strife, when we might be in union;
why are we compelled to say hard things, and to repel them? It is all to
be charged to Creeds, which with the spirit of Cain, has risen the hand
of brother against brother, and caused contention and an evil heart,
where there ought to be charity and peace. It is all vain, it is not
human nature, no matter how strongly disclaimed, to think, that
polemical contention can be perfectly free from the wrong passions, and
it is better not to pretend to meekness, when the opposite is frequently
but too evident. The days of physical strife in religion, it is to be
hoped, are gone; but upon the head of Creeds there is a blood-stain, a
blood guiltiness, which the whole ocean could not wash out. Religion was
made the watch-word for war; the cross was raised as the symbol of
destruction, and the gathering of nations were around it, to carry ruin
as a flood, ay, into those very scenes, where it once bore the dying
form of him, who said, “I came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save
them.” War, in its simplest utterance, is a word of horror; but
religious war leaves nothing darker to be imagined. In worldly enmities,
when the contest is deadliest, there are touches of human compunction;
in the most sanguinary strife, the voice of mercy is sometimes heard,
and the hand of help is given; fiercest opponents will occasionally be
generous—the oppressed, in the hour of triumph, can be magnanimous to
the tyrant in his fall, but place men against each other with different
religious sentiments, unsheath the sword of the orthodox against the
heretic, the heart becomes steel, the bosom becomes ruthless, and the
man is lost in the fiend. Demand you evidence of this? It is written in
gore over the whole face of earth; call up the shades of the thousands
that sunk in the valleys and the mountains of Judea, of those in the
solitudes of the Alps, that fell under the sword of Romish and merciless
extermination; of those with whose life-blood the fierce Spaniard dyed
the soil of South America; of those who were laid low in the glens of
Scotland by Episcopalian fury,—you would have army of witnesses which no
man could number, the accusers of those who for different faith became
the slayers of their brethren. Creeds are naturally allied to the spirit
of persecution, for they establish the principle, and act on it, that
belief may be a sin, and this is the very life of the persecuting
spirit; it was this that built the Inquisition, which for so many ages
spread its ruthless tempest in the Christianity of Europe; it was this
that called forth the rack, and kindled every fire in which a heretic
was ever sacrificed to the demon-god of bigotry: _it was this created a
Dominic_. Protestants are fond of calling the Roman Catholic Church a
persecuting Church, but that Church can retort the accusation. Every
Church is in truth a persecuting Church which acts in the spirit of a
Creed. The Reformers maintained the right of the civil magistrate to
punish heretics. This, if it needed proof, is triumphantly made out by
Bossuet. “There is no need here,” he says, “of explaining on that
question, whether or no Christian princes have a right to use the sword
against their subjects, enemies to sound doctrine and the Church, the
Protestants being agreed with us in this point. Luther and Calvin have
written books to make good the right and duty of the magistrate in this
point. Calvin reduced it to practice, but against Severus and Valentine
Gentili. Melancthon approved of this procedure by a letter he wrote him
on the subject.” John Knox maintained the same doctrine, and even quoted
the extermination of the Canaanites as a case which would justify like
treatment of heretics. Nay, in the present day, one of the Oxford
theologians asserts, “that we ought to anticipate the evils of error in
the person of the heresiarch,” because he contends that it is better he
should endure pain, than that his error should be propagated, and bring
ruin on his infatuated but less guilty followers. This is the true
inquisitorial religion. A man who holds sentiments like these is a
persecutor in his heart, and it is only by accident that he is not a
persecutor with his hand. A man who could send forth that expression, in
other days might have been grand inquisitor or a familiar of the Holy
Office, and would have dragged his victims to the stake, or gloated over
their tortures on the rack. A heresiarch, he maintains, is unworthy of
compassion; and in correspondence with this are some passages of
Irenæus, quoted with approbation in the Tracts for the Times: “What
prospect, then, of peace have we,” says this reverend and truculent
Ecclesiastic, “who are foes to the brethren? What sacrifice do they
think they celebrate, when they become rivals to the Priesthood? When
gathered together beyond the pale of the Church, do they think that
Christ is still in the midst of them? Though men like these were killed
in the profession of their faith, not even by their blood would these
spots be washed out. The offence of discord is a weighty offence, it
includes no expiation, and is absolved by no suffering.” “They cannot
remain with God,” he says, “who will not remain with one heart in God’s
Church. Though they be cast to the flame, to the fire to be burnt, or
lay down their lives by being a prey to wild beasts, they will gain not
the crown of faith, but the penalty of perfidy; their end, not the
glorious consummation of religious excellence, but the death-blow of
despair. Such men may attain unto death, but can never attain unto the
crown.” Creeds have sharpened the sword of persecution, though the civil
arm was used, and if it now be idle in the sheath, it is more owing to
the tolerance of civil governments, than to any change in the spirit of
Churchmen. If Rome had her Inquisition, England had her Star Chamber; if
Rome had her Dominic, England had her Laud. I wish not, however, to pass
unmitigated censure: I am willing and glad to acknowledge that the
Church of England has had many men who were the lights of their age, but
they had minds which were not cast in the Athanasian mould. It is not
Churches only that persecute, but also sects; not great Churches, but
little ones equally; thus did the Genevese, whilst the spirit of Calvin
ruled in it; thus did the Dutch Churches, while the Dort-decrees had
power, and even Socinus himself persecuted Francis David: a Creed,
however simple, can be made an instrument of unjust power, as well as
the most complex one. The persecuting spirit is not extinct, but
changed; it is now a social and a moral persecution. Long experience has
shown that physical torture is useless, and if the principle remained,
the power is gone. But never can we sum up the whole amount of evil
which Creeds inflicted on the world, until we can count the sighs that
have died unheard in the dungeon; until we know all the bitterness of
heart which waits on hopeless captivity; until we count the pangs of
torture which gave slow consuming death; until we can follow the course
of merciless wars, unsoftened by a touch of pity; until we know all the
friends that have been made enemies, and the griefs which have in many
cases made life a martyrdom; until, in fact, we have all laid bare
before us which that day alone will reveal, which reveals all the hidden
works of darkness.

II. I have so far shown that Creeds are the enemies of truth, and
disqualifying the mind to seek truth aright, by resisting and
embarrassing its free development, by ensnaring conscience and
destroying charity; I have shown their failure in their proposed
objects, and their instrumentality in producing all the evils they
pretend to avert, and I proceed in the remaining observations, to
establish the second charge. It is one, however, which does not need
much elaborate argumentation. It will be easy to discover their
tendency, if we consider who are commonly the framers of Creeds, in what
periods they are formed, and in what temper they are usually imposed.
They are framed by Ecclesiastics, and for the main purpose of supporting
Ecclesiastical supremacy. If we take a few names connected with
Creed-making, or with furnishing the materials out of which Creeds are
made, we can easily see the spirit in which they are conceived, and of
which they are the expression. We have then an Athanasius, an intriguing
and ambitious Ecclesiastic, not only the fomenter of spiritual strife in
the Church, but by political intermedling, the fomenter of civil strife
in the Empire: a Cyril, the opponent of Nestorius, and the hater of
Origen; the composer of mighty tomes of divinity, which with much the
same kind since, were equally massive, and equally oblivious; a popular
preacher at first, and afterwards a most orthodox patriarch; at once the
persecutor of the philosophic Pagans, and the heretical Christians: a
Tertullian, that exulted in the prospective damnation of heretics, with
a zeal that almost rivals some modern Calvinistic writers: a Dominic,
that has left the memory of a sanguinary monk, and the name of a saint;
who has been often commemorated in the flames of many an auto-de-fe, and
has had a durable monument to his glory in the dark piles of the
inquisition: a Calvin, the stern Theological tyrant of Geneva, and the
slayer of Servetus: a Knox, who pleaded for the extermination of the
heretical after the manner of the Canaanites: a Cranmer, who caused so
many, both of Catholics and Protestants, to be led to the stake by laws
which changed with the fickleness of a tyrant’s will, who at last
himself blenched before the fate that had been so often prepared for
others: a Laud, the pillar of a star-chamber, and the downfall of a
throne. Such are some of the men concerned in the formation of
Creeds—men of stern natures, of haughty minds, and of boundless
spiritual ambition. And as to the periods in which Creeds are commonly
made, we know they are in times of religious strife, when different
parties are labouring for the ascendancy, when no pains are spared to
gain it, when no acts however shameful or dishonest are thought too bad
to use, if they assist to humble an opponent, or secure a victory; when
passion is heated and malignant, and the judgment totally unfit for
impartiality. The history of Councils and Theological cabal is the shame
of Christianity. Yet, formularies thus fabricated are to be made the
everlasting standards of truth, and men are to be punished here and
hereafter because they do not receive as Divine Truth these shapeless
abortions of Churchmen’s folly. And the temper in which they are imposed
is quite in conformity with that in which they are conceived—oppressive,
exclusive, unjust. With what a vindictive and grasping spirit have not
the Clergy of the English Church laid hold on all they could monopolize
of privilege and power; with what resistance to the last they have
endeavoured to shut out Dissenters from all the rights of Christians and
of citizens. To this hour, had it been in the power of Ecclesiastics,
the Test and Corporation Acts had never been repealed, or the Catholic
disabilities removed. That which is their power gives sufficient
evidence how they would act if they had exclusive possession of more. I
mean the Universities, which they keep closed against Dissenters with
such an obstinate and gothic bigotry. Nor does the injustice end here:
there is a silent, social injustice, which Dissenters suffer; every one
feels it, though it is not easily defined. The Churchman, on the
strength of signing a Creed which he does not always believe, assumes to
be of a higher religious caste than the Dissenter. It is not sufficient
that Dissenters contribute from their worldly good to support a system
which has no alliance with their conscience, but they must still further
undergo the humiliation of being regarded as spiritual and social
inferiors. Creeds are the allies of worldly policy, and ever have been
since Christianity had the misfortune to become a state religion, for
they are the main ties of that unnatural union of Christ’s religion to
human governments—a union injurious to both, making the government
unjust and partial, and religion selfish and secular. They are worldly
in their objects, and they are worldly in their instruments and means.
They are made the stepping stones to wealth, rank, and power; for if the
Establishment did not give wealth, rank, and power, numbers of
expectants would be moderate enough as to the Articles and Creeds. It
would seem anomalous if universal history did not make it evident, that
a body of men in all ages, pledged to denounce covetousness and earthly
passions, pledged to preach humility after the example of a crucified
master, pledged to curb by heavenly motives the abuse of power, should
be of all men themselves the most insatiate in their desires after gain,
the most haughty in their elevation to station, the severest and the
most grinding in the exercise of prerogative, the least willing to
mitigate it, and the most determined not to share it. In every period of
the Church, the worldliness of Ecclesiastics, their ambition, and their
love of lucre, have been proverbial, the scandal of Christians, and the
scorn of unbelievers. The covetousness of the Priest, has, in all
periods, been outstripped by his pride alone; and under every change in
society, the Priesthood have taken care to secure themselves so that
their lines should fall in the most pleasant places. The struggle is a
worldly one from beginning to end, it is all of the world and the things
of the world; if the prize were not of earth, we should hear far less
noise amongst the combatants. The struggle is a worldly one, the policy
is a worldly one, the means and ends are worldly. For are there any
means so evil, that Creeds, if there is a purpose to be gained, will not
tempt to, or assist with force, if there be the power to use it; with
fraud, if there is a necessity that demands it? Creeds and doctrines
have been maintained by frauds the most barefaced, by every artifice and
by every falsehood. But Creeds are indirectly the cause of dire
immorality; of immorality the worst in its kind, and the most evil in
its effects: they corrupt motive in its very source, they weaken that
sense of inward sincerity necessary to all that is true and noble in
human character, they punish honesty, and they bribe to hypocrisy. How
many minds have been robbed of their truthfulness, how many consciences
have been despoiled of their integrity, how many hearts sacrificed their
purity on the altar of interest and expediency, it would be a long and
dark catalogue to enumerate. And it is truly painful to think, that this
result is prepared for in the brightest and the best period of life.
What must be the effect on a young man who, at the very threshold of his
College studies, must profess to believe dogmas that he has scarcely
read, that he has never examined; how much worse if he has examined and
disbelieves them: if he be honest, he is excluded; the fear of his
family starts before him; if he spares them, he ruins his soul; if he
speaks the truth, he wrecks, perhaps, all his worldly fortunes beyond
redemption. When he sees then the most solemn interests made mere
matters of form, religious declarations the tests of honours and of
office, the confessions of grave Ecclesiastics but a pompous and solemn
hypocrisy, the zeal for worldly gain killing the ardour of religion, the
zeal for religion itself only a means to get wealth and power; when, I
say, he beholds all this, he can have no other feeling than that of
unmitigated contempt for the hollow show of orthodoxy; he must observe
that it is only an instrument, a mere make believe, theatrical acting;
and the chances are many, that, disgusted with the whole affair, he
transfers his disgust to religion in general, and makes shipwreck both
of faith and virtue. Creeds are the support of Priestly intolerance;
these are the statutes of the Priest. He does not, it is true, require
you to believe them, but he requires you to say you believe them; say
but that and your peace is made. These are his statutes on which he
condemns, or on which he acquits; by which he tries your allegiance to
sacerdotal authority, and by which, if he can, he will enforce it.
Creeds are instruments of worldly and of spiritual despotism. The
relation of the Priesthood to the civil power, is changeful and
capricious; one time its slave, another time its tyrant. Cunning Kings
have always had the sagacity to see that the safest course was to
flatter and enrich the Priesthood, giving them the shield of the
temporal power, and receiving in return the support of the whole
spiritual armoury either from heaven or hell; and both, thus agreed and
united, have been enabled to enslave the people with a most hopeless
bondage. Let the Prince but heap good things on the Church, hate her
enemies, curse her opponents, patronise her friends, the Church
gratefully in return submits to him with most obsequious obedience. But
reverse the case, and suppose the Prince not only ventures to do without
the Priests, but attempts to curtail some of their good things, then no
epithet is too strong to mark his iniquity; he is then profane,
heretical, infidel: and if the superstition of the people give them the
power, they compel him to bend before spiritual prowess, and from being
their master, reduce him to their slave. The spirit of a Creed-enforcing
Clergy is also seen in this fact, that they dislike the civil power more
and more as that power becomes liberal and enlightened; they oppose it,
and abuse it in exact proportion as it deserves to be admired and
praised: if there be but a symptom that their monopoly is likely to be
broken, and that others are about to share blessings which they had so
long kept to themselves as to think only their own, immediately the
Monarch must be prepared to meet the fierceness of their enmity. It is a
combat to which many a Monarch has been unequal, and to which many a one
has fallen a victim. Tyranny on their side, and slavery on that of
others, is the congenial element in which most established Priesthoods
move, breathe, and have their being; the men themselves are the victims
of their circumstances, circumstances which the influence of Creeds have
made; for Creeds are the parents of Priestcraft, and Priestcraft is
identical with religious despotism.

Creeds are the allies of worldly policy; Creeds are the creatures of the
Church, and the Church is the creature of the state. A national Church
with Creeds for its tests, and legal support and legal penalties, can be
nothing else. And the English Establishment is peculiarly in this
condition; are not her Bishops appointed by the government? Are we not
all aware that every Prelate is virtually the selected of the minister
for the time being? Are we not aware that her canons and constitution,
her catechisms and articles, her rubrics and her ceremonies, are
enforced and established by acts of parliament? Are we not especially
aware that her wealthy revenues are derived from compulsory exaction,
and that payment is wrenched from Dissenters by the strong arm of the
law?—Whence, but from this source, can the Clergy claim their wealth? By
what other power could they enforce it? Every one, who is not a
simpleton, knows that the vast possessions in which the Church rejoices,
are not free will offerings, and that they have stronger security in the
Courts of Exchequer and Chancery, than in the consciences of those who
pay them. They were at first endowments to the Church of Rome; it is by
act of parliament that they enrich those who maintain the Thirty-nine
Articles, instead of praying for souls in Purgatory. The Monarch, in
this country, is acknowledged the supreme head of the Church on earth;
and though that Monarch may be a girl of eighteen, a boy of eleven, an
infant, or an idiot, it is exclusion from the established ministry to
deny it, and was once high treason. To be persuaded of this fact, we
have only to recollect that the law of the land deposed the Romish
Priesthood, and that the Act of Uniformity excluded from the service of
the altar two thousand non-conforming Ministers. “The second Canon
excommunicates every one who shall endeavour to limit or extenuate the
King’s authority in Ecclesiastical cases, as it is settled by the laws
of the kingdom; and declares he shall not be restored until he has
recanted such impious errors.” “The thirty-seventh Canon obliges all
persons, to their utmost, to keep and observe all and every one of the
statutes and laws made for restoring to the crown the ancient
jurisdiction it had over the Ecclesiastical state.” “The twelfth of King
James’s Canons declares, that whoever shall affirm that it is lawful for
the order either of Ministers or Laics, to make canons, decrees, or
constitutions, in Ecclesiastical matters, without the King’s authority,
and submits himself to be governed by them, is, _ipso facto_,
excommunicated, and is not to be absolved before he has publicly
repented and renounced these Anabaptistical errors.” Queen Anne, in an
angry letter to the Archbishop, made the convocation aware that “she was
resolved to maintain her supremacy as a fundamental part of the
constitution of the Church of England.” “Archbishop Bancroft, when at
the head of all the Clergy of England, delivered articles to King James
for increasing the Ecclesiastical courts, and for annexing all
Ecclesiastical as well as Civil power to the Crown. This may be seen at
large in Lord Coke’s third institute.” On such grounds as these, men
claim authority to impose Creeds on their fellow-citizens, to proclaim
themselves the commissioned messengers of heaven, to assert religious
supremacy and to arrogate a divine right; to bind and loose, to condemn
and to forgive. I heard a person lately well remark, that if you gave
him the incomes of the Clergy, he would give you the social status of
those from whom they were taken, and _vice versa_. At ordination, they
solemnly affirm that they are moved by the Holy Ghost; but if the
extreme stipend were two or three hundred a year, this inspiration would
seldom be found to fall on the son of a Duke, or the brother of an Earl.

But, whatever be the abuses which Creeds occasion, or whatever be the
evils they inflict, it may still be said the Church has authority to
decree them; and what she has authority to decree, she has authority to
enforce. To one of the strongest arguments on this point lately renewed,
and more strenuously urged than it had ever been before, I shall here
devote a few general observations.

The claim to dictate and enforce Creeds by the Clergy of our
Establishment, is founded on another claim which, by a party of divines,
is recently asserted with a zeal not inferior to that of the Romish
Priesthood; I allude to the doctrine of Apostolic succession. It is
pretended that the national Clergy by deriving a mission from the
immediate disciples of Christ, have authority, by a mystical
communication of divine energy transmitted to them from age to age, an
authority to decide what is, and what is not, the true faith. On this
ground the high Churchmen consistently deny to all other Ministers the
power to teach or to preach, and with one fell stroke, cut off the whole
of the Dissenters from the spiritual body of Christ. On this ground we
may ask several questions which must receive very unsatisfactory, or
very contradictory answers. First—where, in the gospel history, is it
proposed, as an essential qualification of a religious teacher, that he
shall have an uninterrupted succession from the Apostles? Paul, in his
letters to Timothy and Titus, enumerates many qualities which should
distinguish the Christian Minister; but Apostolical succession is not
once mentioned amongst the number. In the early age of Christianity, we
have abundant evidence, both from Evangelical and Ecclesiastical
history, that many preached the gospel who had no such authority as
Churchmen call Ordination or Holy orders. Secondly—is it possible that
the Apostles could have any successors? The Apostles had powers to which
no Priest in his highest pride, will dare to lay claim; the Apostles
healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead; they proved their
mission by miracles, and this gave a peculiarity to their office which,
it will be admitted, was not transferable. Besides, between the office
of an Apostle and that of a Bishop, there is no identity, and few
analogies. An Apostle was a missionary, a Bishop is a temporal and
spiritual peer: there is no more resemblance of one to the other, than
of his grace of Canterbury amidst the sumptuous luxury of his palace, to
a Moravian preacher in the snows of Lapland; than of the Bishop of
Exeter declaiming politics in the senate, to Felix Neff proclaiming
Christ amidst the Alps. An Apostle was a poor man, a Bishop is a rich
one; an Apostle was a pilgrim and wanderer, a Bishop is a mitred prince;
an Apostle was the object of contumely and scorn to a world which was
not worthy of him, a Bishop is the praised and the applauded by a world
of which he is worthy; an Apostle was the servant of the humble and the
lowly, a Bishop is the companion of the exalted and the great; an
Apostle was the object of state persecution, a Bishop is the favourite
of state patronage: by what paradoxical mistake, therefore, one office
came to be derived from the other, it is a puzzle to conjecture.
Thirdly—by what sort of evidence is the succession to be proved; what
are the conditions which render it true and genuine? By what signs am I
to know that the Ecclesiastical concatenation is one whole unbroken
chain, without a single heretical flaw? By what signs am I to know that
the sacerdotal mystery is rightly given, that there is no spuriousness,
no falsehood, and no forgery? Is every peasant, who hears a sermon from
his Parson, to be in possession of that historic lore, which shall
enable him to determine, by erudite tracing of age to age, that orthodox
hands have been laid on orthodox heads, and that he to whom he commits
the salvation of his soul has all the conditions of a true priesthood?
Fourthly—Whence does the Church of England derive her succession?—That
she derives it from the Church of Rome, all authentic ecclesiastical
history confirms. The establishment of the English Church can be clearly
traced no further than the mission of Austin the Romish Monk; and it is
well known, indeed, there is no attempt at denial, that all which have
since been called papal errors, were then proclaimed and adopted. The
preacher came with the pope’s sanction, the English received the pope’s
religion, and acknowledged the pope’s authority. It is vain beyond all
vanities to argue for succession in the English Establishment, and
assert its independence on the Church of Rome. Its origin is from a
Roman Missionary; it admits the validity of Roman ordination; its
liturgies and rituals are but garbled or abridged translations from
Roman formularies. Whence then is the independence? If unbroken
succession be the absolute condition of ecclesiastical authority, then
the English establishment must either admit the jurisdiction of the
Church of Rome, or acknowledge itself guilty of rebellion, and confess
that it is wanting in one of the prime essentials of a Christian Church.
But our Establishment accuses the Romish system of all manner of errors
and of evils, of idolatry, of tyranny, of persecution, of doing
dishonour to the supremacy of God, and of undermining the merits of
Christ,—of being an awful and fatal apostacy: surely then the purity of
that descent may well be doubted, which comes from so corrupt a source.
The Church of Rome is called by all our declamatory divines the “mother
of harlots,”—if that of England be one of her daughters, it is a hard
task for a controversialist to defend the legitimacy of her birth or the
purity of her character. Moreover, that is a queer kind of unbroken
succession, which could in a few years reflect so many hues of doctrine,
which turned from reign to reign like the weathercock before the wind,
as royal caprice determined, from the bigoted half popery of the Eighth
Henry to the whole Protestantism of the Sixth Edward; from the violent
Catholic Mary, to the equally violent reformed Elizabeth; from a Cranmer
to a Gardiner, and from a Gardiner to a Laud. It is not, therefore,
grateful or graceful in our Establishment to heap odium on her mother,
her from whom she must date her existence, to whom she traces her
clergy, and from whom she has received her creed.

III. In disputing against creeds, and churches which are the creatures
of creeds, I do not deny that religion most genuine and pure, may exist
in many forms—and may be as fervent amongst the adherents of
Establishments as amongst the most zealous of dissenting churches.
Religion, I consider, a necessity of the human heart; it may grovel in
the dust or aspire to the skies—it may appeal to our fears or to our
hopes—it may create hideous images or rejoice in beautiful picturings;
it may decorate the altar with flowers, or bathe it in blood; but still
it belongs to us, is of us, and that of which we cannot, if we would,
divest ourselves. While man has within his soul admiration of greatness
and power, unsatisfied desires and perishing pleasures; while he has
many griefs and many tears; while there are those living whom he loves,
and those departed whom he mourns; while his existence is thus bound to
the past and to the future; while he has speculations that seek but find
no limit, musings on his own and universal destiny,—he must have
religion to destroy these, and you destroy religion, but you also
destroy humanity. If the strongest excitements and the deepest contrasts
could fill and satisfy the human soul, our age and country supply them;
whatever would fix us to the material and the present we have in all
possible varieties, both in their glory and their grossness. If the
spirit is to be seen anxious with poverty we have but a few steps to
walk from rejoicing splendour to pining misery. Civilization is amongst
us with all its luxuries and with all its woes. Thousands toil for daily
bread, and thousands more languish for daily pleasures. Yet nobler
things have we than these. Our science, our philosophy, and our
literature, are rich beyond expression. Our mechanism is akin to magic,
and our industry is like the regularity of nature; the stir of many
interests is abroad, and the struggle of many principles. The power of
fresh life is in the social heart, and the courage of free speech upon
the lips. The tide of thought and liberty moves onward with majestic
swell, and no one can say “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and
here shall thy proud waves be staid.” Whatever there be in wealth, in
power, in glory, in ambition, that desires triumphant sway and secures
all it desires; whatever there be in speculation of boundless enterprize
or capacity of gigantic achievement, our times may boast, yet they
remove not the need of religion, but the religion which the heart
demands is not what creeds or churches can give either to a nation or an
individual.

Creeds are the allies of establishments, and establishments are the
friends of the world. Their whole history and tendency are evidence of
this. But, far be it from me to say that this has no qualification. All
old institutions more or less knit themselves into popular veneration,
the religious as well as others. We cannot look back upon the church of
our country, even in its Romish form, without some of the reverence with
which our nature compels us to gaze on fallen greatness; and now that
the mitre is worn by other heads, and the crosier passed into other
hands, now that its good deeds reveal themselves in the calm of the
past, we can regard its evil ones more in sorrow than in anger. Zealots,
who would eternalize the darkest creeds that superstition ever shaped,
who would build up the throne of proudest priesthood, declaim against
Popery in the most popish spirit: but while national feelings have any
power, while a single venerable structure stands upon our soil in which
we hear the voices of our ancestors, and from which a thousand years
look down upon us, the Roman church, with all its errors, is linked by
sacred memories to our history. It laid the foundation of our civilized
existence; it grew with our growth and it strengthened with our
strength. When our country was yet divided amongst barbarian kings, the
monk of Rome lifted up the cross of Christ, and the heart of the savage
was subdued to the Prince of Peace. It accompanied our national
independence, it trained our fathers’ spirits when living, and now they
are dead it shelters their bones. Through all historic changes, and
through most sanguinary struggles, it preserved alive the spirit of our
common Christianity.

Within it arose many of our greatest men; it nurtured many of our purest
and holiest characters; it reared the altar at which an Anselm
ministered and before which an Alfred prayed. But wealth commonly brings
worldliness, and as it is with laymen, so is it with ecclesiastics. The
church was fed and fostered by Saxon piety, and when the conquest gave
the island new masters it suffered nothing by the change. The progress
of aggrandizement went forward with a quicker pace and a more grasping
hand. Spiritual authority allied itself more firmly to temporal majesty;
celestial vocation would have feudal titles; the coil would be
transformed to the coronet; the humble robe to the princely purple; the
voice of humility swelled into absolute command, monks took their places
above barons, and the primate sat only below the throne.

But under that pomp and ostentation, we say not that all was hollow—that
there was not much of genuine piety far beyond the reach of history. In
the cells of these gorgeous abbeys there were many who did in reality
leave the world and its wickedness behind them. There were some who wept
and prayed in no feigned prostration, who worshipped, it may be with
superstition, but still with sensibility and an upright conscience. In
that stream of melody which pealed at solemn midnight through many a
dome that now lies mouldering, there were some hallelujahs which reached
the throne of God and mingled with the hymn of angels. The pavements
over which we tread in many a secluded ruin may have been worn by
kneeling martyrs that now sleep in peace beneath them: within these
massive buildings so grey and time-wrecked, how often might be found at
the evening hour, when the dim religious light melted through the
painted windows, and the vesper song softened through the lofty vaults,
scattered worshippers who were feeding their immortal life: how
frequently within those temples may the serf in faith and prayer have
forgotten his bonds, and only remembered that he was the brother of
Jesus, and the son of God. And amongst that priesthood so often
stigmatized unjustly by indiscriminate bigotry, many were worthy of
their office; they were the poor man’s friends when poverty was
hopeless; they were his brethren when to the worldly powers poverty was
slavery; they were his supporters and consolers when he had many to
oppress and few to cheer him; they were with him in joy and sorrow, in
sickness and death, when his joy and sorrow, his sickness and death,
were to the mass of his worldly superiors, a matter of contemptible
indifference. In the times to which I refer, the Church was a most
excellent antagonist against political assumption, a barrier against
despotism, a shield for the people against the crown; but now it is an
ally of the crown only when the crown is against the people: in either,
the Crown and the Church struggle may have been only for supremacy, but
whatever were their respective motives, the people were the gainers; the
clergy might make them slaves for another world, but they saved them
from being slaves in this. The power of the priest could curb the
ambition of the ruler; and, in the ruler himself, the will of the
monarch was held in check by the conscience of the devotee.
Ecclesiastical institutions were then not wholly ineffective, but now
the religious and social interests of man are better secured than by any
struggle between the superstitious fears of the Prince, and the
spiritual threatenings of the Priest. From these social changes, Church
Establishments outliving the slaveries which they meliorated, become
inflictors of slavery in return, and hang as millstones and dead weights
on every effort for freedom and advancement. But if we are to have
authority on conscience at all in the form of institutions, I would
rather it should be absolute and unchangeable, uniform, solemn, and
imposing; and if there is to be submission, I prefer it should be to
that which is believed to be stedfast and infallible; for then, if we
had not the freedom of thought, we might at least have the peace of
piety; if we had not the independence of men, we might hope for the
meekness of children.

We cannot say that the English Church in its Protestant state has lost
all claims to traditional veneration. We may, however, safely assert,
that in becoming protestant, it has not become less earthly, and that if
transformed in anything, it is not from the Spirit of the world. We see
very clearly, that it is not in any way distinguished for free or
progressive amendment; and among the Reformed of European churches it is
most the creature of the world, most the lover of the world, most
dependent on the world, both in its origin and its continuance.

On the continent it commenced with the ecclesiastical powers; in ours it
commenced with the civil; and the church in this country adopted the new
doctrine rather as a matter of command than as a matter of conscience.
Whatever have been the theological vibrations of the Establishment, or
whatever its theological inconsistencies, we deny not that it has had
within it right noble spirits, and that it has them still, and while we
condemn such systems, we do not so much condemn, as lament the fine
natures which they have misdirected. Numbers we are aware are now in its
ranks, which are the ornaments of life and to whom the world is in many
ways indebted; and if it were not so, there are those gone by who would
fully dignify her. Amongst her members we recognise many of the great
lights both of our nation and our nature; a Jeremy Taylor of rich
eloquence and rare sweetness of spirit; a Barrow with a mind as lofty as
it was simple and an oratory as prodigal in thought as it was massive in
logic; a Chillingworth, the prince of reasoners, who never allowed his
polemics to ruffle his meekness, to warp his candour, or to deaden his
charity; a Berkeley, whose genius was only inferior to his sanctity, and
whose subtle philosophy never disturbed the simplicity of his truly
child-like nature; a Bedel, who was humble and generous when it was the
fashion to oppress, who though the bishop of a foreign faith in the
midst of a people whom his nation had aggrieved, made his way to their
hearts, and was the object of their blessings; and in our own day there
has been the good and sainted Heber, who combined piety with humanity,
and who adorned practical virtue with all the beauty of the poet and the
Christian.

Names like these might throw a lustre over any system; it is only to be
regretted that any system has not been more fruitful in their
production. In any system, we cannot expect that such men should be
abundant, but observation compels us to confess that the Church has
taken more pride in the reputation of her heroes, than in resembling
them. If we are to judge results by her possessions and opportunities
compared with her moral or spiritual achievements, her works of
worldliness far surpass her works of godliness. Her earthly means have
been unbounded, but where are her heavenly trophies? She has nothing in
comparison to her opportunities to produce in justification of her moral
and national stewardship. Wealth she has had even to fulness. Her lines
have fallen in pleasant places; hers have been the green pastures and
hers the still waters; the tenth of the nation’s produce has been
reserved for her altars. Political power has likewise been hers. Her
mitred ministers are amongst the state’s chief senators. Whether it be
seemly or not, that preachers of the crucified should sit in courts of
proud and worldly legislation, we here forbear to discuss; but once
there, the spirit of the crucified, and of the citizen sanctified by
that spirit, might have been nobly manifested; even there, Ministers of
Christ might have done a glorious work. Men whose lives had been
disciplined by severe and various study; men of chastened passions and
solemn meditation; men who had gone through the humanizing duties of
pastoral gradation from the village pulpit to the episcopal throne,
might be thought a happy counterpoise to the hoary worldliness or
youthful rashness of mere temporal Peers; they would rebuke, we might
suppose, the assumptions of aristocracy, and be as the voice of God for
the rights of the poor. Men who proclaimed that gospel which is full of
mercy and compassion, would resist oppression to the last, and denounce
sanguinary laws with the whole force of their authority; men who were
followers of peace would arrest the blood-hand of war, and quell with
all gentle suasion the horrid spirit of destruction; men appointed to be
teachers of the ignorant, and lights to the blind, would be the friends
of universal instruction; men who were the Priests of that God before
whom all are equal, the Apostles of that Jesus who lived and died for
all, would be ever the friends of liberty and brotherhood. But, I may
ask, when have the Bishops, as a body, not been against the people, and
with the wealthy and the noble? When have they been the first to come
forward to denounce long existing, tolerated, but oppressive, abuses?
When have they raised their voice, as Ministers of God, against
Ministers of the Crown, to avert the horrid curse of war? When have they
given their influence for a free and generous education, which should be
full and boundless as the heart of charity? When, rather, have they not
thrown their most inveterate opposition against it? When is it that a
single effort of national liberty or religious has met their cordial
support? To the moment of despair they stood against the Catholic and
the Dissenter, to the last hour they will also resist the Jew. The
defender of the wronged, the pleader for the weak, the opponent of
sanctified prejudices, the enthusiast for human reforms, the advocate
for peace, the apostle of general education, have never in their most
hopeless hour raised their eyes towards the bench of Bishops with any
expectations of support.

With wealth, with influence, with law, and with scholarship, the Church
has done, and is doing no great spiritual work for her country, or for
mankind, proportioned to her means. She makes a show of upholding her
Creeds, but to many, even of her own members, they are but empty sounds
or convenient mockeries. When we look for any permanent impression on
the popular mind, we have yet to ask concerning the Church, what has she
done? Has she Christianized any great tracts of Heathenism? The English
Establishment, as a Church, has exhibited no missionary zeal, and can
show no missionary triumphs. Individuals and bodies that belong to her
communion, have undoubtedly been active in the great movements that
distinguish modern times, but the impulse has been from outside the
Church, and not from within it—from the zeal of the Sectaries, and not
from the Creeds or Constitution of the Church. On the contrary, of those
who never owned the Establishment, you might find proofs of Missionary
zeal from Indus to the Pole, and from Andes to the Alps. But has she
protestantized our own empire? Consult the writings of Doctor Baines, or
those of Doctor Wiseman; nay, let the lamentations of Reformation
Society itself, ever wailing over the increase of Popery, give the
answer; look through the villages and the glens of England, where Roman
Catholic Chapels are starting up as from the earth, and you will find
the answer fully justified. Ask it in the cities and the mountains of
Ireland, the shout of millions will proclaim what Established
Protestantism has done with all her Creeds and Clergy after centuries of
existence, and a countless expenditure. Three hundred years have nearly
expired since the reformed standard has been planted on that soil, and
after all the spoliation and persecution to which the country has been
subjected, after all the blood and sorrow that have been expended in the
work of compulsory proselytism, Popery has grown stronger, and
Protestantism is expiring. The people pay with repugnance a priesthood
in whom they have not faith, but no power can force them to the worship
in which they have no heart, and they prefer to be taxed rather than be
taught. They are repelled further and further from that system which
commenced in a blunder, and has been continued by rapacity, which
reverses the precepts of Christ, using the sword where he commands it to
be sheathed—which reverses the course of the olden Israelites finding a
land of milk and honey, but leaving it a wilderness, having the pillar
of fire always before, and the pillar of cloud ever behind; the one kept
in flame by hatred and strife, and the other continually dark with
maledictions and tears. But admitting the difficulties of proselytism,
examine the moral state of those over whom the Church has had undivided
control—those with whom there has been least of foreign interference,
and I may appeal to her most strenuous defenders, whether she has not
allowed thousands of human souls to grow up around her for whom she
provided no shelter, whose hearts and wants she made no effort to reach:
they lived without her teaching, they mourned without her solace, they
sickened without her prayer, and until she received the fees for their
burial, she was ignorant of their existence. Yet, after all, by many she
has been called “_The poor man’s Church_.” It is true that for some
years past, and especially at present, there has been a species of
excitement and activity in the church: but so far as these have moral
life in them, so far as they concern the spiritual interests of the
people, whence did they originate? Where were they before John Wesley
and Whitfield raised their soul-piercing cries, and awoke the sense of
immortality that was dormant in the minds of besotted multitudes? Did
the church join with these men, or rather did it not persecute,
calumniate, expel them—say and do all manner of evil against them? What
at the present hour is the activity of the church? Much, it may be, is
sincere and conscientious, but greatly more an emulation with dissenters
in which the pregnant elements are jealousy and fear. Much, it may be,
of disinterested action for the souls of men, but more it is to be
feared for the order and the church. Great excitement there is in the
Establishment, but little of calm and healthy action—a mighty stir of
polemics that make few converts, and of societies that beat the air. The
church has neither union within, nor peace without. Her hand is against
all, and the hands of all are against her. She holds forth creeds as the
symbols of unity, and yet within her own courts are all sorts of
divisions, a chaos of voices that make her the very Babel of theology;
here is one preaching the grace of Palagius, and there another that of
Augustine; one arguing for the hell of Calvin, and another all but
teaching the purgatory of the pope: one a Boanerges for the Bible, and
another an apostle for tradition; with one, Rome is the mother of
abominations, and with another she is the mistress of churches. Amidst
the din, then, of polemics, politics, and theological contradictions, of
inward confusion and outward strifes, how are we to catch the voice of
moral power and of gospel truth? The truth must be told, there is no
grand or concentrative energy of any sort in the church; neither faith
nor freedom, neither bold speculation nor a mighty spiritual zeal; there
is no room even for a gigantic fanaticism or a picturesque superstition;
upon the whole the strife is of this world, and for it; a strife for
wealth or place, in which the spiritual is swallowed in the earthly.
With all her riches and honours; with all her show of dignities and
pride of prelacy, she is yet poor in enlightened esteem, poorer still in
general affection; without authority to sway the superstitious or
liberality to attach the thinking, she has neither the submission of
faith nor the approbation of reason. She has, considering her position
and means, fulfilled no great Christian or Protestant mission; is she
then in a humbler sphere, the friend of general education? Passing over
the Universities, which with a heavy hand she has bolted against
dissenters, is she favourable to the instruction of the youthful poor?
No: except in connection with her ecclesiastical supremacy. Until
recently she had no zeal whatever in the matter: but other parties
becoming active, under the broad gaze of public observation, both her
fears and her interest were awakened. Whilst others were toiling, she
for very shame could not sit wholly idle, and she therefore adopted
education, so far as it was an instrument to counteract her rivals or to
preserve her authority. But to the last and to the death, she is the
sworn enemy to any system of popular instruction which is comprehensive,
liberal, and unsectarian. In this great country, where, thanks to law
and not to creeds, each man may hold and speak his own opinion, she
meets with defiance and resistance every movement towards a large and
equal distribution of knowledge, for lack of which the people are
literally perishing. In a country like this where sects are so many and
so various, and where each has an equal claim on the blessings of
civilized institutions, with a bigotry equalled only by its injustice,
she would usurp the monopoly of national instruction. This is in the
true spirit of creeds, and however repugnant to Christian equity is
fully consistent with worldly policy.

When the church of England seceded from that of Rome, if she cut off
some theological errors, she showed no such disposition respecting her
earthly riches. It cannot be doubted that in the Reformed Establishment,
a greed of lucre remained as deep as was ever in the Romish, less ideal
in its form, and more selfish in its spirit. In our times men absorb the
interests of their church in the interests of themselves, in olden times
men lost themselves in the glory of their church; in that was centered
every thing, even passion itself, as one great and mighty sentiment.
From this it was arose the solemn structure of universal empire; from
this sprung forth the vision of a glory that was to fill the universe.
It was this called up a power before which monarchs bowed, which armed
itself with the terrors of hell and crowned itself with the stars of
heaven. It was this which gave genius the sublimity of religious
inspiration, and which has left for a colder age the forms of beauty to
which faith gave life; it was this which could speak to the world as to
single audience with an eloquence that must live while language has
existence. It may be called fanaticism and ambition, but it is a
fanaticism and an ambition that had something unworldly to dignify them.
The reformed church had preserved the creeds of the ancient one, but not
its creativeness; it has not given conscience freedom, but it has
stripped faith of poetry. Even the ceremonies and forms which it has
preserved are without energy and inspiration—the mere mimicries of
superstition unfraught with a single breath of its enthusiasm. Writings
of no common eloquence have eulogized the cathedral service; it deserves
all that can be said of it, and so do the temples themselves; no one can
hear the one when it receives right expression without solemn emotion,
and no one can behold the antique majesty of the other, but in silent
veneration. The poetry of these things is beautiful, but what is the
reality? A sad contrast—in general, a cold and heartless utterance of
the service, unoccupied pews, a few listless hearers, feeble choirs,
that seem rather to sing the requiem than the triumph of the church,
ostentation without grandeur, and formality without grace. Here, as in
every other department, we find the dominant spirit of worldliness.
Though this service depends for much of its impression on ritual beauty,
yet the higher clergy continually encroach on the revenues and means of
sustaining it. “When we see,” says Dr. Wiseman, “the cathedral service
shrunk into the choir originally designed for the private daily worship
of God’s special ministers, or when we find the entire congregation
scattered over a small portion of the repaired chancel, while the rest
of the edifice is a majestic ruin, as I but lately witnessed, assuredly
one must be more prone to weep than to exult at the change which has
taken place, since these stately fabricks were erected.” I would not
have the world hurled back into Popery; but if we are to have Romish
creeds, rather than have them in repulsive nakedness, give them to us
covered and adorned with the grace of Romish ceremonies; if we are to
resign our liberty, give us at least grandeur and pageantry to amuse our
slavery.

But creeds exist otherwise than in formal expression. A creed is the
standard of a church, it may be the spirit of a sect. And from the
antagonistic aspect which each sect bears to another, and the
centralized organization which it has within itself, this spirit may
have a fierce and powerful operation. The Church-creed is defined; the
Sect-creed is vague, and may depend for interpretation on narrow and
bitter prejudice: the Church-creed may possibly lie dormant, but there
is no escape from the wakeful vigilance of a religious surveillance.
What some sects do by enlarged and rigid co-operation, others effect by
compact and separate unions. The smallness of the assemblies, or the
gradations of dependency, puts one individual within the immediate ken
of another, and thus, if by chance a free thought should be born, there
is little hope that it shall live. Take methodism as an illustration; so
gigantic and yet so minute: with its band-meetings, its class-meetings,
its district assemblies, and its general conference—leaving not a spot
where a heretic could hide himself. In such a system there is neither
room nor a name for liberty, from the preacher who is under the brow of
his conference to the member who lives in the eye of his class-leader.
It is not that such a system creates a terror of expression, from the
first it initiates a slavish intellect—and tends to all the vices of
rancour, bigotry, hypocrisy, and subserviency, to which such an
intellect is allied.

It may be said that my own community in being also a sect, is open to
similar accusations. I do not say that a dictation of belief is
essential to a sect, but it may possibly attach to it with all the
despotism of the most formal creed. If a creed in spirit or expression
be necessary to the constitution of a sect, those then are no sect with
whom I would desire to hold communion. If all in my own belief or any
other, which is great, good, pure, and eternal, inspired by the mind of
God and blessed to the heart of man; if all which disseminates virtue;
which justifies Providence, which emancipates and glorifies society,
goes onward with undeviating pace, if the Kingdom of Jehovah extends,
and the throne of Christ is reared, and the temple of righteousness is
beautified, then, forgetting ourselves and forgetting our sect, we
should rejoice with an honest and generous exultation. We trust the day
will come, when the spirit and the life of Christ, and not the
formularies of men, will be the standards of true religion; when we
shall have unity instead of divisions, when we shall have charity
instead of creeds, when heretic and orthodox shall be lost in the common
name of Christian.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture X.

Footnote 540:

Art. 8.

Footnote 541:

Michelet, vol. ii. pp. 124, 125.

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LECTURE XI.

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

“WOE UNTO THEM THAT SAY, ... LET THE COUNSEL OF THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL
DRAW NIGH AND COME, THAT WE MAY KNOW IT; WOE UNTO THEM THAT CALL EVIL
GOOD, AND GOOD EVIL; THAT PUT DARKNESS FOR LIGHT, AND LIGHT FOR
DARKNESS; THAT PUT BITTER FOR SWEET, AND SWEET FOR BITTER.”—_Isaiah_
v. 18-20.

The Divine sentiments towards right and wrong every man naturally
believes to be a reflexion of whatever is most pure and solemn in his
own. We cannot be sincerely persuaded, that God looks with aversion on
dispositions which we revere as good and noble; or that he regards with
lax indifference the selfish and criminal passions which awaken our own
disgust. We may well suppose, indeed, his scrutiny more searching, his
estimate more severely true, his rebuking look more awful, than our
self-examination and remorse can fitly represent; but we cannot doubt
that our moral emotions, as far as they go, are in sympathy with his;
that we know, by our own consciousness, the general direction of his
approval and displeasure; and that, in proportion as our perceptions of
Duty are rendered clear, our judgment more nearly approaches the
precision of the Omniscient award. Our own conscience is the window of
heaven through which we gaze on God: and, as its colours perpetually
change, his aspect changes too; if they are bright and fair, he dwells
as in the warm light of a rejoicing love; if they are dark and turbid,
he hides himself in robes of cloud and storm. When you have lost your
self-respect, you have never thought yourself an object of divine
complacency. In moments fresh from sin, flushed with the shame of an
insulted mind, when you have broken another resolve, or turned your back
upon a noble toil, or succumbed to a mean passion, or lapsed into the
sickness of self-indulgence, could you ever turn a clear and open face
to God, nor think it terrible to meet his eye? Could you imagine
yourself in congeniality with him, when you gave yourself up to the
voluble sophistry of self-excuse, and the loose hurry of forgetfulness?
Or did you not discern him rather in your own accusing heart, and meet
him in the silent anguish of full confession, and find in the
recognition of your alienation the first hope of return? To all
unperverted minds, the verdict of conscience sounds with a preternatural
voice; it is not the homely talk of their own poor judgment, but an
oracle of the sanctuary. There is something of anticipation in our
remorse, as well as of retrospect; and we feel that it is not the mere
survey of a gloomy past with the slow lamp of our understanding, but a
momentary piercing of the future with the vivid lightning of the skies.
Our moral nature, left to itself, intuitively believes that guilt is an
estrangement from God,—an unqualified opposition to his will,—a literal
service of the enemy; that he abhors it, and will give it no rest till
it is driven from his presence, that is, into annihilation: that no part
of our mind belongs to him but the pure, and just, and disinterested
affections which he fosters; the faithful will which he strengthens; the
virtue, often damped, whose smoaking flax he will not quench, and the
good resolves, ever frail, whose bruised reed he will not break: and
that he has no relation but of displeasure, no contact but of
resistance, with our selfishness and sin. In the simple faith of the
conscience it is no figure of speech to say, that God “is angry with the
wicked every day” and is “of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” So
long as the natural religion of the heart is undisturbed, to sin is, in
the plainest and most positive sense, to set up against Heaven, and
frustrate its will.

Soon, however, the understanding disturbs the tranquillity of this
belief, and constructs a rival creed. The primitive conception of God is
acquired, I believe, without reasoning, and emerges from the affections;
it is a transcript of our own emotions,—an investiture of them with
external personality and infinite magnitude. But a secondary idea of
Deity arises in the intellect, from its reasonings about causation.
Curiosity is felt respecting the origin of things; and the order,
beauty, and mechanism of external nature, are too conspicuous not to
force upon the observation the conviction of a great architect of the
universe, from whose designing reason its forces and its laws
mysteriously sprung. Hence the _intellectual_ conception of _God the
Creator_, which comes into inevitable collision with the _moral_ notion
of _God the holy watch of virtue_. For if the system of creation is the
production of his Omniscience; if he has constituted human nature as it
is, and placed it in the scene whereon it acts; if the arrangements by
which happiness is allotted, and character is formed, are the
contrivance of his thought and the work of his hand, then the sufferings
and the guilt of every being were objects of his original contemplation,
and the productions of his own design. The deed of crime must, in this
case, be as much an integral part of his Providence as the efforts and
sacrifices of virtue; and the monsters of licentiousness and tyranny,
whose images deform the scenery of history, are no less truly his
appointed instruments than the martyr and the sage. And though we remain
convinced that he does not make choice of evil in his government, for
its own sake, but only for ultimate ends worthy of his perfections,
still we can no longer see how he can truly hate that which he employs
for the production of good. That which is his chosen instrument cannot
be sincerely regarded as his everlasting enemy; and only figuratively
can he be said to repudiate a power which he continually wields. There
must be _some sense_ in which it appears, in the eye of Omniscience, to
be eligible; some point of view at which its horrors vanish; and where
the moral distinctions, which we feel ourselves impelled to venerate,
disappear from the regards of God.

Here, then, is a fearful contradiction between the religion of
conscience and the religion of the understanding: the one pronouncing
evil to be the antagonist, the other to be the agent, of the divine
will. In every age has this difficulty laid a heavy weight upon the
human heart; in every age has it pointed the sarcasm of the blasphemer;
mingled an occasional sadness with the hopes of benevolence; and tinged
the devotion of the thoughtful with a somewhat melancholy trust. The
whole history of speculative religion is one prolonged effort of the
human mind to destroy this contrariety; system after system has been
born in the struggle to cast the oppression off; with what result, it
will be my object at present to explain. The question which we have to
consider is this: “How should a Christian think of the origin and
existence of evil?” I propose to advert, first, to the speculative;
secondly, to the scriptural; thirdly, to the moral relations of the
subject; to inquire what relief we can obtain from philosophical
schemes, from biblical doctrine, and from practical Christianity.

I. Notwithstanding the ingenuity of philosophers in varying the form and
language of their systems, there can be but two solutions offered to the
great problem respecting evil. The benevolence of the Creator may be
vindicated, by denying that he is the author of evil; or, by pronouncing
it his mere tool, unavoidably introduced for the production of greater
good.

(1.) In Greece, the genius of whose people anticipated most of the great
ideas which have since occupied the world, we find the first clear trace
of the doctrine of two original causes, one good, the other evil, of the
order and disorder of the universe.[542] Amid the almost universal
pantheism, which gave the sanction of philosophy to a corrupting
mythology, one or two great thinkers seized on the true conception of an
intelligent, eternal, infinite Mind; not mixed up in indissoluble
oneness with the universe, like the principle of life with an animal or
vegetable organism, but wholly external to matter, capable of acting
objectively upon it, of moulding it into form, of assigning to it laws,
of disposing it into uniform arrangements, and subordinating it to the
production of beauty, the reception of life and soul, and the ends of
benevolence. With the absolute perfection, intellectual and moral, of
the creative spirit, there was nothing to interfere; he called into
existence only what is good,—light, life, happiness, wisdom, harmony,
virtue. All else was to be ascribed to the imperfect materials from
which the universe was constructed. Of these he was not supposed to be
the author; no conception was entertained of creation out of nothing by
the volition of the divine and solitary Spirit. Co-eternally with him,
matter was thought to have existed, inert, and dark and formless,—the
boundless and unworked quarry, whence the great Artist of earth and
skies moulded the orbs of heaven, and furnished his mansions of space
with magnificence and beauty. The materials thus provided to his hand,
did not afford unlimited facilities for the execution of his good
designs; they had the inherent and obstinate properties of all matter,
of which skill might variously avail itself, but which Omnipotence could
not utterly subdue. They for ever dragged down every being towards the
passiveness and chaos of the primeval state, and established a universal
gravitation towards nonentity. Hence a ceaseless tendency in all things
to descend from the higher to the lower states of existence, and to slip
from the divine into the inert: on the soul of man were forces impelling
it into the grosser animal life; in the animal life, a propensity
towards disease and death; and, in lifeless organisms, a law of
corruption and return to atoms. In this unconquerable sluggishness of
matter, and not in the intention of the Creator, was to be found the
source of all evil, natural and moral. The supreme Spirit had called
into being whatever is fair and blessed and pure; and that there is no
more good, was due to the resistance which his materials offered to his
will, and which had made his execution finite, while his desires were
infinite.

In this system, all faults and imperfections are attributed to the
opposition of a passive and evil principle, co-existent with the First
Cause, and restraining him within certain limits in working out the
problem of creation. The essential idea of the scheme is, that the
actual frame of the universe is the result of a struggle between two
conflicting energies, both primitive and eternal, to the one of which is
to be referred all that is good, to the other whatever is evil. Make
then a slight and superficial change in this scheme; throw aside its
abstract and philosophical dress; _personify_ this impracticable
material principle which stands in the way of the Creator’s glorious
designs: call it, instead of inert, obstinate; instead of the residence
of death, the destroyer of life; instead of a weight on the Divinity, a
force against him; in short, treat it, not as negative, but as positive;
not as impervious to light, but as the power of darkness; not as a
physical obstruction, but as in real antipathy to God: and by such
assumption of personality, this hostile energy becomes an active
principle of evil, a malignant and antagonist God, busy in frustrating
the purposes of Providential goodness, and spreading ruin, disorder, and
guilt over the fair regions of nature and the soul.

This doctrine of a good and evil spirit, engaged in perpetual conflict
on the theatre of the universe, is then only the popular and mythical
form of the philosophical speculations on matter and Deity which I have
described. It is commonly known under the name of the Manichean heresy.
It was from very early times the characteristic idea of the Persian
theology; and thence, as I shall show, by admixture with Judaism, has
given rise to the prevailing belief in a devil.

To this scheme, considered as a metaphysical theory of the divine
perfections, and a solution of the perplexities respecting natural and
moral evil, objections of insurmountable force will occur to every one.
It preserves the infinite benevolence by sacrificing the omnipotence of
God. It sets up a rival to his government, from whose malignity he can
only imperfectly protect us; so that his Providence becomes precarious,
and we feel ourselves the sport of a conflict the most awful, beset by
pure, unmitigated, indestructible evils, which, however beaten off in
the end, must win against us many a dreadful success. A believer in this
doctrine may indeed presume, that a Being, omniscient and benign as God,
would never have called a world into existence unless assured, by his
foreknowledge, that he could prevailingly protect it from the powers
which obstructed him, and render life to every creature on it a blessing
on the whole. Under any other conditions, his goodness would have
restrained him from the act of creation. Still the blessed Ruler sways
his works under constant check; and all limitations on his power must be
proportionate deductions from our peace. This theory, then, fails to
afford us the desired relief. It does not reconcile the God of our
conscience with the God of our understanding: it simply adheres to the
former, and rejects the latter; assuring us that, as our secret hearts
had said, the great Father hates evil as his enemy; not, as our logic
had insinuated, wields it as his instrument.

(2.) We turn, then, to the second attempt to extricate our thoughts from
this perplexity; which is found, in a consistent form, only in the
system of philosophical necessity. This scheme assumes the absolute,
unlimited monarchy of God; represents him as originally alone, and
without either universe or materials for its construction; teaches that
he willed all things into existence; conceiving the plan, speaking the
word, beholding the birth, sustaining the order, decreeing the means,
ordaining the end. The compass of his design is all-embracing; all
causes and effects, all enjoyment and misery, all excellence and guilt,
lie within its circuit; nor can “there be evil in a city,” or in a
world, “and the Lord hath not done it.” We are assured, that in fact it
is impossible to distribute to separate authors the blessing and the
curse which appear to mingle in creation; for the same law which brings
the one introduces the other; the tempest which blasts the field and
flock purifies the air of pestilence; the necessities of the body are
the incentives of labour and the stimulants of the mind; and industry
and art, commerce and wealth, the whole structure even of society and
civilization, rest on the ultimate basis of hunger. Nor is it possible
to separate suffering, even in conception, from a scene in which great
virtues are to be born, and the diviner forms of character to be
trained. Evil is _the resistance_, by its conquest over which moral
force can alone be measured and manifested; without which, conscience
and fidelity would have no field of victory, benevolence no place for
glorious toil, faith and wisdom no consciousness of power. In the sickly
seductions of pleasure, are seen the health and simplicity of holiness;
amid the temptations of selfishness, we discern and venerate the spirit
of self-oblivious love; beneath the arm of tyranny, and amid examples of
hypocrisy, we learn how calm the front of uprightness, and how noble the
magnanimity of truth. Pain is never _the whole_ of suffering; which
spreads in moral influence beyond itself and its hour, and administers
some of our noblest discipline. The anguish of one human being is
usually the pity of many; even the guilt of one may be the forbearance,
the warning, the affectionate and healing grief, of many. Scarcely can
any ill be found that is not so linked with visible benefits, so
entangled with arrangements in which we recognize indisputable
blessings, that one only author can be assigned to all; if he has had
foresight of any thing, he must have had foresight of all; if he has
devised a part, he must have devised the whole. Even such free-will as
the human mind possesses is a power of his own deliberate bestowal; and
the whole extent of its disastrous mistakes, its deluded estimates, its
degrading preferences, its faithless abuse of liberty, must be
considered as ordained and introduced by him for some ultimate and
transcendent good. At present, and for a long future yet, the sufferings
are great which sin must entail upon all who come within its range; but
even its saddest victim is yet a child of God, and must at last
(benevolence requires no less) be enabled to pronounce his existence a
boon. And hence we must believe the penalties of guilt to be remedial;
subduing the stubborn soul, and leading it back to seek its peace in
God; working out their own remission, because their victim’s
restoration; till the wail of despair shall be softened into the sob of
repentance, and this into the sigh of self-distrustful hope, falling
into the silence of deep resolve; leading to the energy of a new
fidelity, warmed by the refreshment of a returning love, and bursting at
length into grateful chorus with the song of the redeemed.

The essential idea of this system evidently is, that evil is a result of
God’s will, his temporary instrument for everlasting ends. This
characteristic remaining, it is wholly unimportant whether he is
regarded as producing it immediately or mediately; distributively or
collectively; by detailed volitions of his own, or by the agency of a
being commissioned to this department of his government. As the
blessings, scattered by the activity of good minds of every order in the
universe, are no less his, than if there were no creature but himself to
shed them forth, so the woes, which any dependent spirits of evil may
diffuse, belong as truly to his providence, as if they were the personal
inflictions of his will. Hence the doctrine of wicked angels, and of a
created Prince of darkness, is the very same with the system which I
have just described; simply, its popular and mythological form,
gathering up the abstract conception of evil into a person; but still
representing it, in this living dress, as a creature intentionally
formed by the Omniscient and predetermining God. I regard the belief in
the existence of Satan, not as opposed to the prevailing Unitarian views
of Providence, but, _so far as it is consistently held_, as in all
essential particulars, identical with them. Its relation to the
character of God is the same; and the sole difference between the two is
in the question of personality; a question of great consequence, when
the existence of a _divine_ person, as the Holy Spirit, is suspended on
the decision; but of small moment when, as in this case, a mere
_creature_ more or less is to be given to the invisible world. What does
it matter to us whether there be any, or a myriad, of interposing agents
between the ills that touch us and our God? Surely it is with the
_effects_,—with the evils themselves,—that our practice and duty are
concerned, and about their _original cause_ that our faith is anxious;
and, on both these points, the Necessarian and the Satanic schemes seem
to be agreed. Both refer our thoughts back to a time when no evil
existed, and say that none could have come into existence, had the
creative activity of God never been exercised. Both make the same
estimate of the actual sins and sorrows and temptations which are in
contact with our life; and whichever view be adopted, these are neither
increased nor diminished, their complexion is neither brightened nor
darkened, their insidiousness and their treatment continue the same.
They come out of the dark upon us; and no more concern us till they
strike upon our experience, than a line of light affects us, till its
end impinges on our eye. Hence I cannot feel much interest in the mere
question respecting the existence of a Devil; and must be excused for
treating it as only an insignificant part of a subject vast and
terrible.

Does, then, this second system resolve our difficulties, and altogether
harmonize the perfections of God? Alas! the success is no greater than
before. Why this circuitous method of producing a happy universe? Evil
is called into being, as an instrument of good, in this world; and then
is annihilated, by the addition of more evil, in another. If it be the
great object of Providence to get rid of suffering and sin, if his
government be an educative discipline for purifying the guilt,
illuminating the ignorance, and destroying the misery of souls, must we
not ask, why then were these things created? If God’s providence be thus
_against_ them, why was it ever _for_ them? And how are we to think of
those agencies, as the work of his own hands, on which his whole
administration is said to be aggressive? No answer can be given, except
that the temporary operation of natural and moral evil was
unavoidable,—the essential and only means of accomplishing results which
all admit to be beneficent, especially the development and progress of
mind, and the probationary discipline of character. It may be so; but,
in this explanation, the benignity of God is again saved at the expense
of his Omnipotence. If no other means were open to him than those which
he has actually employed, his range of possibilities was mysteriously
limited, his choice incomprehensibly narrowed; and he solved the problem
of Creation under some restraining conditions. And no theory, which
leaves this shadow of necessity lingering behind the throne of God,
justifies its pretensions as the vindicator of his Power.

Scarcely does this system seem to be reconcileable with the Holiness of
God. I confess myself unable to understand how a Being, who is held to
be the prime cause of all the moral evil which the universe contains,
can be regarded as morally perfect; or to imagine, if this be consistent
with infinite purity, what phenomena would be inconsistent. It is not
enough to say, that the evil is produced, by no means for its own sake,
but for ultimate good. Often, at least, does a human being do wrong on
no other pretext; and the very plea admits, that God subordinates moral
distinctions to some other good, and esteems some foreign benefit worth
purchasing by the deed of sin. Is it urged, that the foreknowledge and
infallible certainty of the Divine mind justify this, and that it is
only because man wants the requisite discernment, that he is forbidden
in his blindness to do evil, that good may come? Then it would seem that
moral distinctions are intended only for the ignorant; and are, to an
immeasurable extent, delusions of intellectual infancy, designed to
vanish, or undergo unimaginable transformations, as our mental vision is
enlarged. And if this be so, none of our ideas of obligation are
applicable to God, and he passes beyond the range of our moral
apprehension, reverence, and love. No; the language of piety becomes
unmeaning, and the sanctity of religion is in danger of utter ruin,
unless the divine sentiments of right and wrong are perceived to be akin
to our own, recognising the same immutable differences, and
spontaneously observing the same laws. Not even can we admit that he has
created, and could change, the relations of right and wrong; that his
will is the source of obligation, and by a command could make into a
binding duty that which in itself is sin. Moral excellence is no
creature of mere power, which he has created; for he is, and ever was,
excellent himself, rendered venerable by intrinsic and unoriginated
perfections; by holy sentiments, whose outward action, indeed, must be
dated from the beginning of created things, but whose consciousness has
been from everlasting. I dare not think, that the Providence of God
largely consists in doing that, which would be guilt in man.

From this scheme then, not less than from the former, we fail to obtain
satisfaction. It does not reconcile the faith of the conscience with the
faith of the understanding; but simply prefers the latter, to the injury
of the former, compromising God’s abhorrence of evil; and, for the sake
of maintaining his sovereignty, making it his instrument. In fine,
philosophy must make confession of its ignorance, and talk no more so
exceeding proudly. This question of ages is too much for all its
subtlety. Let us pass on to the doctrinal search of Scripture. Does it
either reveal any new view of our subject, or determine our choice to
either of the schemes we have reviewed?

II. Trinitarian theologians maintain, that the Bible reveals to us the
existence of a created spirit of evil, with a host of subordinate
associates in guilt; who seduced our first parents, and so introduced
both the spiritual depravity and the mortality of our race; who has
since tormented the bodies of men with divers diseases, afflicted their
minds with some species of insanity, and corrupted their conscience with
every variety of horrible and guilty thought; and who especially
assailed the person, and withstood the kingdom of Christ, knowing that
the Messiah’s power would finally overthrow his own. In opposition to
this statement, I submit, that in neither the Mosaic nor the Christian
dispensation have we any revelation of the existence of such a being, or
any doctrinal solution of the problem respecting the origin of evil. Let
me not, however, be supposed to say, that no such beings as Satan, the
fallen Angels, and demons, are named in Scripture. I do not pretend to
fritter all these away into personifications and figures of speech. I
have no doubt that some of the sacred authors believed in the real
existence and agency of such beings; I have just as little doubt that
others did not; and that the Hebrew conceptions on this subject
underwent a regular development in the course of their history, no part
of them having any origin in supernatural revelation, but the whole
being either the result of natural speculation or a gift from foreign
tribes. This will be thought very shocking by those who, maintaining the
plenary inspiration of the Bible, cannot imagine that it contains any
traces of the notions and sentiments of its various times; and cannot
think of admitting even an incidental allusion that is not an infallible
oracle. But until it can be shown, that a person inspired is unable to
form an opinion of his own; that he has no ideas from education and
position, no prepossessions in common with his age; that, from Moses to
the John of Patmos, every scriptural author is an unerring authority,
not merely in faith and morals, but in cosmogony and physics, in geology
and astronomy, in natural history, physiology, metaphysics and medicine;
we may venture to maintain, on the ground of historical evidence, that
the belief in witchcraft and charms, in angels and devils with Chaldee
names, in demoniacal possession and Satanic inflictions, may be no
result of revelation, but one of the natural traces of time and locality
with which the Scriptures abound. There prevails, however, great
misapprehension respecting the ideas of the Scripture writers on these
subjects; and especially, the conception of a Devil is thought to
pervade the whole Bible in one unvarying form. With a view to rectify
this mistake, I will briefly notice the chief passages of the Hebrew and
Greek Scriptures relating to this topic; adverting, in succession, to
the history of the fall; to the growth of the belief both in Satan and
exorcism; and to the temptation of Christ.

(1.) It is impossible to conceive of a greater outrage upon an author’s
meaning, than is the common representation of the Fall, on the account
of that event in the Book of Genesis. Not a trace, even of the faintest
kind, does the original narrative contain of all that theologians tell
us respecting the tempter, the curse, the recovery. The tempter was not
an evil spirit, but a serpent, to whose natural and instinctive cunning,
and not to any diabolical instigation, the seducing thought is
attributed: for “The serpent,” it is said, “was more subtle than all the
beasts of the field.”[543] The writer, indeed, had not apparently any
idea of such a being as Satan; for, throughout his five books, there is
not a word in allusion to such a personage; though he records, I
believe, more temptations, more trials of faith and duty, which it is
thought the office of the evil one to administer, than all the rest of
the Scriptures together. It is nothing to the purpose to say that,
without preternatural possession, it is absurd to suppose that the
serpent could speak, and become an agent in the transaction at all; for,
on any view of the passage, the author ascribes to the creature the
power both of speech and of walking: and to imagine that the Devil would
betray himself by assuming so improbable a vehicle, and making a dumb
reptile talk, is surely little consonant with the character of so subtle
a diplomatist. The record affirms that, by way of punishment, the
serpent was reduced to the reptile state, and compelled to crawl instead
of walk;[544] and an author, whose imagination had reconciled itself to
this conception, would feel no additional improbability in supposing the
same occasion to have condemned the animal to silence. This has always
been the interpretation of those Hebrew writers, who have received the
account as literal history. Josephus, a man of learning and a priest,
states, that “all animals at that period partook of the gift of speech
with man;” that “the serpent lived on familiar terms with Adam and his
wife;” and “from a malicious intention of his own, persuaded the woman
to taste of the tree of knowledge;” that, in consequence, “God deprived
the creature of speech and of the use of his feet.”[545] If the account
be considered as historical, this is its plain meaning; and the
insertion in it of a powerful malignant spirit, is a mere fiction of
later times.[546]

Nor is the usual description of the results of the Fall, a less
extravagant perversion of Scripture. The necessities of toil to the man,
the pangs of travail to the woman, and to both a consequent abbreviation
of the term of life, are all the effects of which the original speaks,
and to which Josephus refers.[547] St. Paul adds to these the
introduction of mortality; but neither in his writings, nor in any more
authoritative place than the invention of modern divines, do we find the
least hint of any moral corruption entailed by the fall on the human
constitution, or any penal woes prepared for our lapsed nature after
death. Throughout the whole subsequent Scriptures, there are only three
places in which the effects of the first transgression are
mentioned:[548] all of these are in the epistles of Paul; two, out of
the three, are mere passing allusions, not occupying a line; and in the
remaining one, as well as in the others, _natural death_ alone is said
to have passed on the descendants of Adam; “not” (as Mr. Locke justly
remarks) “either actual or imputed sin,” which, he says, “is evidently
contrary to St. Paul’s design here.”[549] Between the guilt of men, and
the fall of their progenitor, there did not exist the slightest
connexion in the Apostle’s mind; they are never once mentioned together.
When he draws his fearful pictures of the depravity of both Jews and
Gentiles, he is wholly silent respecting the fall, describing all this
corruption not as constitutional but as actual, not as the growth of a
foul and incapable nature, but rather as the abuse and insult of one
inherently noble.[550] And when again he speaks of the fall and its
issues, he is silent about moral depravity, and dwells only on physical
death. Never was there a writer more barbarously tortured, more
ingeniously forced to speak in a spirit which he loved to withstand,
than this glorious Apostle. Out of his own writings, by incredible
perversion, his generous conceptions are condemned as heresies, and his
favourite sentiments denounced as blasphemies.

“I will put enmity,” says the book of Genesis, “between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel.”[551] Considered as a description of the
mutual hostility and injuries of the race of venomous reptiles and the
human species,—man naturally attacking the head of the creature, and the
animal, especially among the naked feet of oriental climes, finding
nothing in man so vulnerable as the heel,—a more vivid sentence can
scarcely be conceived. Considered as a prophecy of Christ, ingenuity
could construct nothing more obscure. And, accordingly, it is never once
appealed to, as a prediction, either by the Messiah himself, or by any
of the New Testament writers; and before the Advent, it had certainly
failed to produce the proper effect of prophecy, and had not aided in
preparing the minds of the Hebrews for the event. It is indeed
acknowledged by “a strenuous advocate for this application of the
passage,” “that the expressions here used do not necessarily imply the
sense thus attributed to them; and that there is no appearance of our
first parents’ having understood them in this sense, or that God
intended they should so understand them.”[552] If, then, this prophetic
signification escaped the persons to whom the announcement was made, and
the nation before whose eye it lay for ages, and the Christ himself of
whom it spake, and the Evangelists and Apostles who proclaimed him to
the world, our doubt of its reality can scarcely be deemed
unwarrantable.

But it is, I believe, a misconception of the author, to treat this
passage as a piece of history. Neither Moses, nor any other scriptural
writer, professes to have been miraculously instructed in the events of
the antediluvian world; and if they make no such pretension themselves,
it is altogether gratuitous in us to make it for them. The slightest
consideration must convince us, that all _natural_ sources of
information respecting so primitive a period must have ceased to exist,
at least in any reliable form: and the earliest portions of the book of
Genesis have every characteristic of that beautiful mythical
composition, which is the first fruit of the literary activity of every
simple-hearted nation, and which mingles together in one texture,
tradition, fact, speculation, poetical conception, and moral truth. In
this instance, the writer seems to have been oppressed by the feeling,
that human peace and tranquillity were disturbed by the restless
aspirings and inquisitive ambition of the mind. If man could but be
content to take the good which God has spread within his easy reach, and
not permit himself to pry into the possibilities of having more, his
life might be spent as in a garden of the Lord, in the warmth of sunny
days, and the light sleep of unhaunted nights. But he cannot repress his
insatiable curiosity, his passion for the fruits of knowledge and
dignity, of which Providence has given him the idea, but which have been
set beyond his permitted reach; and this thirst of his nature he
resolves at all hazards to indulge; this godlike aspiration, imprisoned
in a frame to which it is unsuited, chafes against his quiet, and
abbreviates his days. Hence proceed the struggle and the toil of life;
the thistle and the thorn which he gathers from a soil that might have
yielded only flowers; hence, children are we all of care and sorrow;
hence, by the sweat of the hardy brow we must live, and soon fret down
existence into dust; not however, without our victory after all; for we
subjugate the earth, and reign thereon.

Observe too, that Adam rules the woman; and the woman has a heel upon
the serpent:—the last seduced is placed the highest; and the first
corrupter sinks into a reptile. Our temptations are _beneath_ us; and
having once detected them, we are to rule them ever after. Once let the
knowledge of good and evil be tasted, and the primitive equality of
things, which put man and beast upon a level, is destroyed; all beings
fall into the ranks of a moral gradation; and though none that have free
will may escape a fall, he that is last to yield shall be the first to
reign.

(2.) Neither then in the original account, nor in the scanty subsequent
notices of the transgression in Eden, is there any disclosure of a
Satanic existence. Let us rapidly follow down the course of Hebrew
literature, and search in it for the first and successive indications of
this belief. I have stated that the books of Moses are destitute of all
trace of such a conception; nor can any thing at all corresponding to
the popular idea of the Devil, be found in any part of the Old
Testament. The name itself never once occurs; and it would be a great
mistake to identify the Satan of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the Devil
of the Greek.[553] The Satan of the former has a very uncertain
personality. The name rather denotes an office, which any agent of
Providence might be appointed to fill, than a definite individual being.
Any person, performing the function of an accuser, or who prepares
matter for accusation, by seducing men into evil,—any one acting the
part of an adversary to another,—is called Satan. Thus David is called
Satan to the Philistines;[554] a certain captain named Rezon was Satan
to Israel;[555] the angel of Jehovah was Satan to Balaam;[556] nay, even
Paul uses this singular expression, “Hymeneus and Alexander, I have
delivered to Satan” (for what purpose, do you suppose), “_that they may
be taught not to blaspheme_.”[557] No doubt this idea, at first vague
and indefinite, gradually became individualized; and that which had been
an appellative, passed into a proper name, yet without ever wholly
losing its generic character.[558] At the commencement of the book of
Job occurs its most distinct and definite use. It is there applied, not
to a fallen Spirit, not to a repudiated subject of the celestial state,
but to an angel near the throne, to a recognized minister of the Supreme
Power, who appears in the courts above among “the Sons of God.” He is
represented as a general inspector and public prosecutor of the Divine
government over man; going to and fro over the earth, by heavenly
commission, to execute the probationary part of the great Ruler’s will,
and administer to mankind the severities which test their faith. In the
earlier Hebrew writings, this office is said to be filled by no
subordinate instrument: it is Jehovah himself who is represented as
trying his servants,—as the personal cause of their afflictions, and
author of their temptations. I recently heard the following passage from
the first book of Chronicles adduced in proof of the agency of Satan in
seducing men from their allegiance to God. “And Satan stood up against
Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.”[559] Now it so happens,
that this same event is recorded also in the much more ancient books of
Samuel, where it is thus introduced: “And again the anger of the Lord
was kindled against Israel, and HE moved David against them to say, ‘Go,
number Israel and Judah.’”[560] What can more clearly mark the natural
progress of opinion on this point? As the ideas of God became more
elevated and refined, it was felt to be scarcely compatible with his
perfections to seduce his children into violation of the duties he
himself required: and the imagination at least, if not the
understanding, was relieved by assigning that office, of hardening the
heart and tempting the will, (which originally had been left with
Jehovah himself,) to some interposing being, who might separate between
God and guilt.

When we open the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, we perceive a complete
change in this class of ideas. Even the latest written of the canonical
books introduce us to several angelic beings, unknown to the earlier
Scriptures,—as the Michael and Gabriel of Daniel. But in addition to
these, we find in the Jewish Apocrypha, for the first time, the matured
conception of the Prince of evil;[561] who is thenceforth represented in
the scarcely consistent relations of creature and enemy of the Most
High: and it is in this form that the notion presents itself to us in
the New Testament writings. Now what is the inference from these facts?
In the books of the ancient dispensation, this malignant Spirit does not
yet appear: in the writings of the new dispensation, he is
mentioned,—not as a novelty of revelation, but as long familiar to the
mind of every reader. The origin then of the belief in his existence,
must be sought between the close of the Hebrew inspiration and the
opening of the Christian. And what had happened in this interval? The
Jewish people had been in long and intimate relation with Persia:
connected with it by political ties, and united by the sympathies of
monotheism. The characteristic features of the Persian religion
were,—its doctrine of a Spirit of Evil in perpetual enmity to the
Supremely Good;—and its representation of a heavenly hierarchy, whose
spirits were ranged in ranks of angels and archangels, and received
their separate names. These ideas then naturally passed into the Jewish
mind, with little change; except that the Evil Spirit was reduced to a
somewhat lower station, in obedience to the stern Mosaic principle, of
the absolute Monarchy of God.[562] And as these notions became perfectly
engrafted on the national faith of Israel, the founders of Christianity
were educated in them; and they were permitted to appear by incidental
allusion, and in conformity with the general sentiments of the country
and the age, in the pages of history and correspondence, which the
evangelists and apostles have left. Nor can I perceive, either how it
can be proved, or why it should be desired, that God would annihilate
from the understanding of his inspired servants, all the harmless ideas,
foreign to their mission, which constituted the common stock of thought
at the time, and gave them points of necessary sympathy and intellectual
contact with the spirit of their generation. How slight the sanction
which they give to some, at least, of these mythological imaginations,
may be estimated by a single fact. The whole theory respecting fallen
angels rests upon two verses,[563] each in one of the most doubtful of
the New Testament writings: indeed the texts can scarcely be regarded as
constituting two independent authorities; for the latter is little else
than a repetition of the former; occurring in a portion of the second
epistle of Peter, which, strangely enough, contains, the sentiments and
even the language of a large part of the epistle of Jude. When such
evidence as this is brought forward, as conclusive and infallible, I
would respectfully ask our opponents, whether they seriously believe, on
the authority of the same epistle, that Michael the archangel disputed
with the Devil about the body of Moses? and as this is nowhere else
mentioned, whether an express and personal revelation of the fact was
imparted to St. Jude? If so, consistency would require them to maintain,
that this is one of the essential doctrines of the Gospel: for how much
soever our natural and corrupt reason might be tempted to think the
circumstance trivial, if true, it cannot really be otherwise than
fundamental, if privately and explicitly revealed.[564]

From the foregoing remarks, the general principles, in conformity with
which I would treat the question of demoniacal possessions, will be so
evident, that it will be unnecessary to enter into any details. The
precise relation to each other of the various orders of evil spirits in
which the Jews believed, it is not possible to define. It is certain,
however, that they made a distinction, which our common translation of
the Scriptures has improperly obliterated, between demons and devils.
The former were thought to be of only human rank, the souls of the
wicked dead: and it was these only that were supposed to possess and
afflict the bodies of the living. The latter were guilty angels, and had
no agency assigned to them on earth, being kept in durance within the
prisons of the unseen world. There was therefore the same difference
between demons and devils, as with us between ghosts and fiends. Of the
former, Beelzebub was considered as the chief; of the latter, Satan: and
whether these beings were regarded as standing in any definite relation
to each other, is uncertain; probably the Devil, as the Prince of
darkness, was believed to be the ruler of all the powers of evil,
whether human or angelic. Unlike his incarcerated compeers, Satan was
permitted to be at large, and to practise his arts against mankind: all
gentile kingdoms being absolutely his; and even the chosen people not
protected wholly from his malignity, at least until the Messiah’s reign,
which was to commence with his dethronement. It may be observed by any
careful reader of the gospels, that the evils of which he was held to be
the author, are not the same that are ascribed to Beelzebub and his
demons. Satan, and he only, was the moral seducer: and the physical
calamities proceeding from him were only natural and intelligible
diseases, regular enough to fall under the cognizance of science. The
demons had, on the contrary, no concern with the conscience; and
occasioned only the irregular and apparently preternatural maladies,
which science deserted and left to the tender mercies of
superstition;—of which epilepsy and insanity are the most remarkable
examples.

Of this system of notions the evangelists were doubtless possessed. But
that they held them on the tenure of unerring inspiration can by no
means be shown. On the contrary, the natural causes which produced them
can be so clearly detected in the prevalent sentiments of their age and
country, that not the slightest pretext remains for referring them to
express revelation. So far from requiring a miracle to excite these
conceptions, we must admit, that nothing less than a miracle could have
excluded them, familiar as they had been to the national mind from the
time of its intercourse with Persia. Had the founders of Christianity
never received any extraordinary mission, they would have entertained
the conception of demoniacal possession; and its hold upon their
thoughts must therefore be regarded as the result of natural
prepossession, not of supernatural communication. A notion whose human
origin can be distinctly traced,—which was shared by uninspired persons,
and existed in the authors of our religion in their uninspired
years,—has no claim to be considered as a part of Christianity, and is
as open to doubt and examination as any other opinion of antiquity. To
affirm that, were it not true, God must have blotted it from the mind of
his messengers, is not only to overbear evidence with assertion, but to
decide dogmatically on the obligations of Deity, and, with infinite
presumption, to dictate the fit measure of his gifts. Till it can be
shown, that inspiration is co-extensive with omniscience, it must remain
compatible with error.

The language of the Gospels then, respecting demoniacs, is not to be
regarded as a condescending accommodation to popular prejudice; but as a
genuine expression of the writers’ own state of mind. There is no reason
to doubt that the prevalent ideas were shared by the apostles
themselves. By these did they interpret the facts which they witnessed:
through the colouring of these, their minds beheld the miracles of
Christ, and their own: and at the suggestion of these arose the language
in which they have recorded the ministry of their Lord. All this has not
the smallest effect on the truth and soundness of their testimony. They
no doubt reported faithfully that which they _saw and heard_; only they
tell us something more, adding a few phrases, disclosing also what they
_thought_. Like all witnesses of simple mind, especially when telling
that which awakens their wonder and affection, they mix up their
statements of phenomena with notions of causation; and present us with a
composite register of sensible impressions and mental interpretations.
It should be our business, as we read, to call up before us the scene
described; to see for ourselves the things visible, and hear the things
audible, of which the record speaks; and we shall find that this effort
will usually make a perfect and easy separation between the real and the
merely ideal, between the permanent fact and the temporary explanation.
When, for example, it is said, that the _demons_ in a man possessed
_spake_ to Christ, of what are we to think? for what voice are we to
listen? where are the lips from which the utterance flows?—Certainly it
was from the organs of the poor _lunatic himself_ that the sound must
have proceeded: and modern language would describe this fact by saying,
that _he_ spake; and in thus believing we accept the whole _attestation_
of the historian.

(3.) The same principle must be applied to the temptation of Christ. No
hint whatever is given, implying any visible appearance communing with
Jesus; nor need we even suppose any audible voice addressing him.[565]
The Evil Spirit, like God himself, was held to be invisible, and
inappreciable by any human senses: and when _words_ are attributed to
him, they represent only the dialogue which he is supposed to hold with
the silent and tempted heart. His whole guilty transactions indeed
belonged, it was imagined, to the region of the mind; and his was a
viewless and speechless wrestling with conscience on its throne.
Whenever therefore the seductive assaults of Satan are recorded, the
real fact described is this; that internal moral conflicts have been
going on, and deluding thoughts have been passing, like the shadow of a
dark Spirit, across the purer soul. And in such case, the first and the
only thing of which our consciousness can be aware, is, the occurrence
of these thoughts. To their antecedent source, our testimony cannot
reach; and whether they are precipitated on us by some enemy from
without, or are of spontaneous origin within our own minds, is a point
accessible indeed to speculation, but beyond the contact of experience.
Till they enter our nature, and so become a part of our personality,
they are nothing and nowhere: and when they enter and we feel their
torment, they are ours and no other being’s. No one ever sees, hears, or
feels, the Devil; he _perceives_ simply the intrusion of sinful ideas,
and _supposes_ them to be the result of diabolic power. He experiences
the temptation in reality; and refers it to the tempter in idea. And
were this not true of Christ, as of ourselves, it would be false to say,
that he “was tempted in all points as we are.” The temptation of our
Lord then, stripped of the dress which the historians have thrown around
the central facts, was the natural struggle, by which he exchanged the
imperfect, and local, and ambitious conceptions of the Messiah, which
his cottage training in Nazareth had imparted,—for that pure, and
self-sacrificing, and comprehensive interpretation of the office, which
broke upon his solitude so awfully. That he learned, at Mary’s knees, to
cherish the common hope of his nation, in the form under which it
prevailed among the peasantry, appears as little doubtful, as that he
caught the language of his native fields. Yet it is certain that this
early vision passed away; and that when he himself was called to fill
the appointed office, he acted out a conception quite opposite to the
dreams imparted to his childhood. Once he had mused on the widening
glory of Judæa; but he ended with announcing the prospect of its fall.
Once he had exulted in the dignity and power of the coming messenger,
who should break the oppression of his people, and set forth anew the
triumph of their ancient Providence: he declared himself at length the
meek prophet of penury, and woe and childhood. Once he had thought of
what Jerusalem would be, when the temple should be the centre of the
world’s homage, and multitudes of all nations should throng its
pavement, and its incense should rise in the pride of freedom, and its
hymn spring upward on the wing of happy melody: but ere his work of life
was finished, he taught a lowlier yet sublimer expectation, not of the
compression of the world into the Hebrew worship,—but of the diffusion
of that worship to cover the world; and revealed that secret shrine in
every human heart, where emotions, purer than incense, may burn for
ever, and tones sweeter than music be for ever breathed. This revolution
of sentiment, this conflict, by which new thoughts of inspiration
expelled the old ones inherited from education and reputed prophecy,
constituted the temptation in the wilderness; nor was it possible that
ideas the most divine, should thus burst the shell of custom and
tradition, without a convulsion truly terrible. It would be easy, were
it not irrelevant, to show how this hidden colloquy between the national
prepossessions and the personal intuitions of our Lord’s mind, would
give rise to the separate scenes of which the temptation is said to have
been composed. Possibly, however, the history, as it stands, is not the
record of a single event, to which a fixed date can be assigned in his
ministry: more probably, it gathers into one view a series of mental
conflicts, distributed over his whole public life; the struggles between
the accidental and the essential portions of his nature; between the
national and the human: between an historical imagination trained amid
the gorgeousness of prophecy, and a heavenly conscience dwelling with
the simplicity of God; between the conventional and the spiritual;
between, in short, the superinduced faith contracted from time and
place, and the inborn faith of a soul divine and free.

In the preceding notices of Scripture, no sanction is given to the
interpretations, if such there be, which resolve Satan into a
personification, treat the temptation as a vision or an allegory, and
identify the demoniac phraseology with the common language of
pathological description. I believe, indeed, that, wherever the Devil
and his agency are named, the only _real fact_ denoted is, the
occurrence to some one of a moral temptation: and that, wherever demons
are said to have been cast out, the only _historical event_ described
is, the cure of some physical or mental disease. But it appears to me
absurd to deny, that the writers meant more than this; to doubt that
they held the popular theory of such facts, and blended it naturally
with their record; that they were sincerely under the influence of the
existing system of demonology, and referred the seductions of sin to the
personal activity of the malignant Spirit. Nowhere, however, do they
pretend to set forth these ideas as gifts of preternatural revelation,
but simply take them up as part of the common media of thought belonging
to the age, and use them as the incidental colouring to their narrative
of facts. In different parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, as we have seen,
very different, and even inconsistent notions respecting the origin of
evil prevail: the conception of a powerful diabolic agent underwent a
regular and natural development: and the system of pneumatology apparent
in the Greek Scriptures is traceable to a foreign origin in an
uninspired age. Hence we must conclude, that respecting the origin of
evil, nothing doctrinal is specially revealed; that even in Palestine,
the human mind has been left to grapple with this great problem by its
own natural forces; and that we rise from the page of Scripture, as from
the speculations of wisdom and genius, with the difficulty yet unsolved.

By no means, then, can we attain to any theoretical certainty, or
logical consistency of belief, on this great topic. Revelation is
silent, and philosophy perplexed; and the controversy between the
Religion of Conscience and the Religion of the Understanding, is
undecided still. Let the framers of systems say what they will, the
thing is deeper than our minds, and what can we know? Nothing remains,
but to abandon hopelessly the speculative point of view, and treat the
matter as an object, not of knowledge, but of trust; to regard it as a
question to be decided by its bearings on duty, rather than its
materials for debate. Whenever the means of attaining to objective truth
do not exist, we can but rest in those views of things which most
entirely accord with our best nature. If we cannot tell what is true of
God, we yet may judge what is fittest for ourselves; what state of mind,
what modes of thought, prepare us best for the work of life; what mental
representation of existence most nobly sustains those fundamental moral
convictions, which it is the end of Christianity to fix in our implicit
faith and constant practice. To this arbitration we must submit our
present doubts respecting the source of evil; and, while waiting to
reach the realities of reason denied us now, accept, as our best truth,
the conceptions which are most just to our moral nature and relations.

III. Let us then, for final decision, consult the practical spirit of
Christianity, and ascertain to what view of the origin of sin it awards
the preference. Is it well, for the consciences and characters of men,
to consider God,—either directly or through his dependant Satan,—either
by his general laws, or by vitiating the constitution of our first
parents,—as the primary source of moral evil? _or_, on the contrary, to
regard it as, in no sense whatever, willed by the Supreme Mind, and
absolutely inimical to his Providence? Are we most in harmony with the
characteristic spirit of the gospel, when we call sin his instrument, or
when we call it his enemy? For myself, I can never sit at the feet of
Jesus, and yield up a reverential heart to his great lessons, without
casting myself on the persuasion, that God and evil are everlasting
foes; that never, and for no end, did he create it; that his will is
utterly against it, nor ever touches it, but with annihilating force.
Any other view appears to be injurious to the characteristic sentiments,
and at variance with the distinguishing genius, of Christian morality.

(1.) Christianity is distinguished by the profound sentiment of
_individual responsibility_ which pervades it. All the arbitrary forms,
and sacerdotal interpositions, and hereditary rights, through which
other systems seek the divine favour, are disowned by it. It is a
religion eminently _personal_; establishing the most intimate and
solitary dealings between God and every human soul. It is a religion
eminently _natural_; eradicating no indigenous affection of our mind,
distorting no primitive moral sentiment; but simply consecrating the
obligations proper to our nature, and taking up with a divine voice the
whispers, scarce articulate before, of the conscience within us. In this
deep harmony with our inmost consciousness of duty, resides the true
power of our religion. It subdues and governs our hearts, as a wise
conqueror rules the empire he has won; not by imposing a system of
strange laws, but by arming with higher authority, and administering
with more resolute precision, the laws already recognised and revered.

This sense of individual accountability,—notwithstanding the ingenuities
of orthodox divines on the one hand, and necessarian philosophers on the
other,—is impaired by all reference of the evil that is in us to _any
source beyond ourselves_. To look for a remoter cause than our own
guilty wills,—to contemplate it as a Providential instrument, whether we
trace it to Adam, to Satan, or directly to God, bewilders the simple
perceptions of conscience, and throws doubt on its distinct and solemn
judgments. The injury may be different in character, according to the
particular system we adopt: but _any_ theory which provides the
individual moral agent with participating causes of his guilt, offends
and weakens some one of the feelings essential to the consciousness of
responsibility.

There is no persuasion, for example, more indispensable to this state of
mind, and, consequently, no impression which Christianity more
profoundly leaves upon the heart, than that of the _personal origin and
personal identity of sin_,—its individual, incommunicable character. Our
own secret souls, and that divine gospel which confirms all their
sincere decisions, alike declare that _my_ sin cannot be _your_ sin;
that by no compact, even by no miracle, can any exchange of
responsibilities, or transfer of moral qualities, be effected. What
indeed is guilt in its very nature, but a violation of some venerated
rule of action,—a contravention of our own sentiments of equity, truth,
purity, or generosity? and what is the guilty mind, but a system or
habit of desire, which successfully resists the control of reason and
conscience? That mind which is the seat of the delinquent will,—which
hears the remonstrances of right, and heeds them not,—is the sole
proprietor of the sin, deriving it from none, imparting it to none: its
dwelling is in his volition; and unless that can cease to be his, the
criminality can admit of no alienation. He may have accomplices indeed:
but they are so many additional agents, each with his separate amount of
guilt, and not partners among whom his one act of free-will is
distributed. The trains of thought and emotion, the adjustment of tastes
and affections, are different in every soul: each has its own moral
complexion; each, its separate moral relations; each, its distinct
responsibility in the sight of God. In no sense is the gift or transfer
of character more possible, than a barter of genius, or an interchange
of sensation. God may call new life into existence, and determine what
its consciousness shall be: he may annihilate life, and plunge its
memory and experience into nothing: but to shift the feelings and aims
which constitute the identity of one being into the personality of
another, is no more possible, than to alter the properties of a circle,
or to cancel departed time.

To trifle in any way with this plain and solemn principle, to invent
forms of speech tending to conceal it, to apply to moral good and ill,
language which assimilates them to physical objects and exchangeable
property, implies frivolous and irreverent ideas of sin and excellence.
The whole weight of this charge evidently falls on the scheme, which
speaks of human guilt as an hereditary entail; a scheme which shocks and
confounds our primary notion of right and wrong, and, by rendering them
impersonal qualities, reduces them to empty names. No construction can
be given to the system, which does not pass this insult on the
conscience. In what sense do we share the guilt of our progenitor? His
concession to temptation did not occur within our mind, or belong in any
way to our history. And if, without participation in the _act_ of wrong,
we are to have its _penalties_,—crimes in the planet Saturn may be
expected to shower curses on the earth; for why may not justice go
astray in space, as reasonably as in time? If nothing more be meant,
than that from our first parents we inherit a constitution _liable_ to
intellectual error and moral transgression;—still, it is evident, that,
_until_ this liability takes actual effect, no sin exists, but only its
possibility; and _when_ it takes effect, there is just so much guilt and
no more, than might be committed by the individual’s will: so that where
there is _no_ volition, as in infancy, cruelty only could inflict
punishment; and where there is _pure_ volition, as in many a good
passage of the foulest life, equity itself could not withhold approval.

In whatever way, then, you define this hypothesis, it directly denies
the personal character and personal identity of sin, and thus enfeebles
the most essential element comprehended in the sentiment of
responsibility. The practical result will inevitably be, a system of
false views and fictitious feelings, with respect both to our own
characters, and to those of our fellow-men. That which can be
vicariously incurred, or vicariously removed, cannot be guilt; cannot
therefore, be sincerely felt as such; can awaken no true shame and
self-reproach, and draw forth no burning tears when we meet the eye of
God. It is a shocking mockery to call sorrow for an ancestor’s sin by
the name of penitence, and to confound the perception (or, as it is
termed, ‘application,’) of Christ’s holiness with the personal peace of
conscience: the one can be nothing else than moral disapprobation,
attended by the sense of personal injury; the other, moral approval,
attended by the sense of personal benefit: and mean and confused must be
the sentiments of duty in a mind which can mistake these for the private
griefs of contrition, and the serenity of a self-forgetful will. Only
counterfeit emotions, and self-judgments half sincere, can consistently
arise from a faith which mystifies the primitive ideas of moral
excellence, and destroys all distinct perception of its nature. It is
always with danger that we turn away from the _natural_ hand-writing of
God upon the conscience: from heedless eyes the divine symbols fade
away; unless, indeed, in some preternatural awakening of our sight, they
blaze forth once again, to tell us that the kingdom of true greatness
hath departed from us. Let each consider his own life as an indivisible
unit of responsibility, no less complete, no less free, no less invested
with solemn and solitary power, than if he dwelt, and always had dwelt,
in the universe alone with God. There is confided to him, the sole rule
of a vast and immortal world within; whose order can be preserved or
violated, whose peace secured or sacrificed, by no foreign influence. We
cannot, by ancestral or historical relations, renounce our own
free-will, or escape one iota of its awful trusts. No faith which fails
to keep this truth distinct and prominent, no faith which shuffles with
the sinner’s moral identity, contains the requisites of a “doctrine
according to godliness.” It must pervert, moreover, our estimates of
others’ characters, no less than of our own. If guilt can be
hereditary,—guilt meriting infinite and indiscriminate punishment,—it
must be universal: and whether we see it or not, we must believe it to
exist, with no appreciable variation of degree, in every human heart.
Thus it becomes a prime duty to regard every thing in life, except its
wretchedness, every thing in human nature, except its displays of
foulness and of ruin, as a delusion and a cheat. We strongly protest
against this miserable distrust of our best and truest perceptions. We
maintain the intelligible and appreciable character of all moral
qualities, in opposition to all schemes which make distinction between
natural and theological excellence, and which propose imaginary
standards of right, different from those that recommend themselves to a
discerning conscience. Sin is no mysterious thing, no physical poison,
no taint in the blood, which may lurk venomously within us, giving no
symptom, and exciting no consciousness, of its presence. However
insidious in its approaches, and subtle in its manifestations, vigilance
only is needed to detect it: its stealthiness affords, indeed, a sound
reason for circumspection; but not for superstitious horror at its
possible existence, without discoverable trace, in ourselves or others.
To look on the spectacle of vice, and not feel abhorrence, indicates a
depraved state of sentiment:—to look on the spectacle of virtue, and
believe it sin, to witness all the outward expressions of goodness and
suspect interior corruption, to be invited by natural emotion to moral
admiration, and, by theological stimulants, to galvanise the heart into
loathing (or even “pity”) instead, implies a falsehood of conscience no
less malignant. Let me not be told that, in thus speaking, we assign too
high a value to mere external moralities, which are but treacherous
indications of character, and may be the visible fruit of various and
dubious motives. We never cease to teach, that no Epicurean
respectabilities, no conformity with conventional rules of order, can
satisfy the claims, or afford any of the peace of duty, unless they be
the native growth of a perceptive, devout, and loving heart:—that it is
not in the hand which executes, but in the soul which devises and
aspires, in the secret will which makes sacrifice of self, in the
conscience which grapples with temptations and overmasters fears, that
true and immortal virtue dwells; since acts are evanescent, while the
affections are eternal. But it is monstrous to infer from this
superficial character of outward morality, that there is probably no
substratum of genuine goodness. Nay, it is a mean and degrading
scepticism which distrusts, without assignable cause, the reality of any
of the symptoms of excellence; is tempted by theories of divinity to
insinuate that they are an empty semblance; and plies its pious
ingenuity to blacken the great human heart. He that is pledged to make
out a case against mankind at large, must find of difficult attainment
that charity that “hopeth all things and believeth all things.” How
blunted must be the delicacy of moral perception, where the gradations
of excellence are swept away into the dark abyss of universal depravity!
and to effect this reduction of all minds to the same level, what
vehement distortion, what wretched sophistries, what devotional scandal
and romance, must become habitual! How much less place for delusion and
insincerity is there, when we maintain a reverential faith in the
natural moral sentiments, repress no generous admiration, disbelieve no
genuine expression of disinterestedness and integrity, and instead of
whining over guilt, dare to bless God with a manly voice, for all
varieties of noble virtue!

Thus does the habit of tracing sin beyond the individual will to a
progenitor, spread confusion over the moral perceptions, by mystifying
the nature of guilt, and destroying that feeling of its personal
character and identity which belongs to the Christian sentiment of
responsibility.

By a different and directer method the same tendency operates, when we
refer our temptations to the agency of the Devil, rather than to our
descent from Adam. An invisible power, foreign to ourselves, is held
chargeable, to an undefined extent, with the evil of our own wills; and
the conscience can as ill bear the present distribution, as the past
transmission of its guilt. It is said indeed, that man is not “less
culpable, because Satan seduces him, and blinds his mind” since there is
no power on earth or hell to _compel_ him to transgress; that he is a
willing captive, and no more to be excused than when a human accomplice
entices him to crime, without (it is admitted) relieving him of any
portion of his criminality.[566] But the cases are obviously not
parallel. Man stands up before his fellow man, equal with equal; his
weapons are fairly measured against his danger, by the great Arbiter
himself; and therefore is he summoned to close with his temptations, and
condemned as a traitor if he yields or flies. And should it ever be
otherwise,—should the feeble-minded and inexperienced be misled by the
cunning of the strong-headed and practised seducer, the instinctive
justice of mankind mitigates its sentence, and commiserates the fall.
With how much greater force, then, must this palliation be felt, when
the Tempter is admitted to be “possessed of capacity and power immensely
surpassing ours,”[567]—a “master-spirit” of majestic intellect, with
whom we are as an infant in the giant’s grasp! With such a being, the
broken energy, the purblind vigilance, of a fallen man, can hardly be
expected to cope; at least they will be induced, in so plausible a case,
to _esteem themselves_ unfairly matched against so exalted a competitor.
While it were earnestly to be desired that the wretched conscience
should be allowed no evasion, and for awhile no alleviation, under the
condemning sentence of its memory and its God,—this doctrine calls up,
inevitably and reasonably, the feeling of a divided criminality, of
which the weaker nature has the smaller share.

These tendencies, so far as they have been truly stated, must continue
to act, so long as we trace the evil that is in us to _any_ foreign
agent. Hence it appears impossible to defend the doctrine of
Philosophical Necessity,—which presents God to us as the author of sin
and suffering,—from the same charge of invading the sense of personal
responsibility. Not that we are for a moment to sanction the vulgar
error which confounds this scheme, in its theoretical structure and
practical effects, with the system of fatalism; or to imagine, that an
abdication of all free-will, and a total indifference to moral
distinctions, would be its proper and consistent results. Though,
however, it leaves room for individual pursuit, and motive to individual
perfection, one of its chief and most vaunted features undoubtedly is,
the encouragement which it affords to the _passive virtues_: and it will
be found, I greatly fear, that it is their _passiveness_, more than
their _virtuousness_, which puts them under the protection of this
doctrine. Doubtless, he who can look on all men as the instruments of
heaven, and recognize in their mutual injuries and crimes the chosen
methods of the Divine government, must learn submission to many a
triumph of wrong, and consider anger against the profligate and
oppressor as insubordination against God. He who is haunted by the
immutability of things, and feels himself locked in with the universal
mechanism, will chafe himself with no rash spirit of resistance, nor
vainly thrust his hand against the fly-wheel of nature. He who believes
that all things are right, that absolute evil does not exist, that
whatever men may be, and whatever they may do, nothing could possibly be
better, must needs discover that his own wishes are no criterion of
good, and look with a contented eye over the whole surface of the past,
as well as a serene trust on the prospect of the future. Nor can there
be any self-exaggeration in a mind conscious of possessing but an
infinitesimal fraction of the universal power,—and even that little
wielded and directed by an uncontrollable sovereignty, that turns the
hearts of men whithersoever it pleaseth. Complacency with every lot,
resignation to all events, forbearance under injury, an equal tenderness
for all men, and the lowliest attitude before God, are the
unquestionable results of this religious philosophy. But all this is
attained by a process which, I would submit, the moralist is bound to
regard as illegitimate;—by an appeal to external mechanical necessity,
rendering any thing but these states of mind intellectually improper;
not by any considerations of _duty_, or any perception of their
_intrinsic obligation_. The whole efficacy of the system is negative,
not positive. It prostrates and destroys the turbulent elements of our
nature, and its quietude is the residue left by their exhaustion: it
crumbles beneath us the heights of passion, and deposits us upon a
placid level beneath the infinite expanse. Its characteristic
dispositions are reached by the sacrifice of the feelings which are
distinctively _moral_:—the feelings, that is, of which right and wrong
acts and propensities are the appropriate objects;—the feelings of
approbation and aversion, which recognize merit and demerit, and impel
to praise and blame. The Necessarian sees, neither in himself nor
others, any good or ill desert to justify such feelings: he regards
natural and moral qualities in the same light,—contemplating benevolence
as a species of health, and selfishness as akin to disease: if he utters
censure or applause, it is not _from_ an impulse in himself, but _for_
an effect upon their object. In his love to men moral distinctions have
no place; for as their sins justify no alienation, their virtues give no
claim to admiration: he loves them apart from the perceptions of
conscience,—without veneration,—without praise,—by the mere force of the
sympathies which take interest in sentient beings as capable of
happiness and misery:—loves them, may we not say, because there is no
cause for hate; resentment, impatience, disgust, being out of place
towards creatures who are what they were meant to be, nothing remains
but to include them in his complacency. Nor does the _humility_ which
this system inculcates, bear the true and Christian stamp. It is not the
irrepressible aspiration after moral perfection, the pursuit of an image
in the conscience infinitely beautiful and great, the devoted worship of
the holy, good, and true, which draw forth tears of contrition for the
past, and dwarf the attainments of the present, though reckoning their
thousand victories; but it is rather a sense of physical and mental
insignificance, which annihilates all worth except such as we may derive
from sharing the regards of God: it is not a perception of want of merit
in our character, but a consciousness of incapacity for it in our
nature.

And who could fairly realize the fundamental idea of this scheme,
without losing all confidence in his own moral convictions, and
constantly distrusting his best feelings as delusions? For does he not
believe, that whatever is brought to pass is absolutely right and best,
and that any different view of it is an illusion incident to our human
point of sight? The optimist casts his eye over the past, and can see no
blot upon the retrospect: yet does it contain innumerable things,—woes
and crimes the most deplorable,—which, ere they happened, were repugnant
to his worthiest desires, and to be encountered by the most strenuous
resistance of duty. Is he then to look at these objects, up to the last
moment of the present, as utterly evil; and from the first moment of the
past, as indisputably best? Is he to set up a two-faced sentiment,
gazing with mutable and discriminative expression on things approaching,
but with unvaried complacency on things departed? Is it possible, that
actions and characters can change their complexion by mere migration in
time? or was it altogether a mistake to think so ill of the iniquities
which, having been summoned into existence, must always have appeared
eligible in the view of God? These perplexities must perpetually arise
to a mind which uses _two_ standards of good; the _moral_, which
approves the _right_; and the _eventual_, which reveres the _past_. The
latter incessantly contradicts the former, and insinuates that it is a
blind guide, aiming at that which the All-wise will refuses to achieve.
And thus our theorist, _in so far as he is true to his principles_,
would lapse into scepticism of his moral judgments; into a hesitating
veneration for the oracles of duty; a suspicion that they may inculcate
provisional superstitions, rather than eternal truths. It must be
difficult to unite pious acquiescence in the guilt of others, with
uncompromising resistance to our own.

In short, the contemplations presented by this doctrine do not appear to
be favourable to _active_ excellence: rising too far, and embracing too
much, they quit the contact of this green earth, and lose sight of the
interval between the quiet vales where virtue walks, and the giddy
heights it may not tread. The soul, rendered conscious more of the
immensity around it, than of the obligations upon it, lies still,
without a passion, without a fear,—venturing an approach to the
benignity more than to the energy of God. Perhaps it is the tendency of
all systems which most amply spread forth the Divine Infinitude, to be
less occupied with the conception of the Divine Holiness: perhaps the
mind intensely occupied with the idea of one solitary Power, absorbing
all subordinate agencies, and willing every change that renders space or
time perceptible, has all its strongest impulses, both moral and
sympathetic, suppressed in the abyss of mystery; and the distinction
between different beings and different acts appears, in so vast a view,
too trivial to be worthy of deep emotion and resolute volition. Certain
it is, that the oriental religions which have encouraged this sublimity
of devotion and self-annihilation in the Deity, have not been remarkable
for the formation of a sound and vigorous type of moral character.
Indeed we have seen that God himself, the supreme centre of reverence,
no longer remains, under the Necessarian representation, a really _holy_
object of thought. If we are to admit no possibility of resisting his
will, and proclaiming him the Only Cause, to drown all other powers in
his immensity, it becomes impossible to feel that he has any paramount
regard to moral distinctions: he cannot share our feelings towards human
guilt, for it is his work: he objects to no amount of vice, provided it
issues in enjoyment: and not one libertine, or traitor, or murderer,
could his purposes have spared. To reconcile us to this dreadful
thought, we are reminded of his benevolence, which will bring all things
to a glorious result. But how can we discern any sanctity in a
benevolence so indiscriminating in its instruments? Must all our various
apprehensions of God, the supremely good and supremely fair, shrink into
this one, of ultimate-happiness Maker, by no means fastidious in his
application of means, but secure of producing the end? Must the harmony
of the Divine perfections lapse into this dull monotone? It can hardly
be well for our conscience to worship a Being whom we could not imitate
without guilt: or, if it be said, that we may imitate his ultimate aim,
though not his intermediate methods,—what is this but to admit that our
moral sympathies with him must be postponed to the end of time?

This system, then, like others which trace sin to causes beyond the
individual will, does not appear to foster that deep reverence for moral
distinctions, and sense of personal responsibility, which eminently
characterize practical Christianity. It is favourable indeed to the
passive virtues, which occupy their due place in the morality of the
Gospel: but in producing them, appeals to considerations discouraging to
the active spirit of moral resistance and moral aggression.

To all this, however, an objector might urge the following reply:—“Human
conduct is not influenced by such considerations as you have supposed.
It matters little what men may think about the _origin_ of their guilt,
if they make no mistake about its _consequences_: let them only be sure
that it will be punished in the end, and they may please themselves with
speculating about its beginning. Every one will fly an inevitable
suffering, whether self-incurred or induced by foreign causes: and if he
clearly sees the penal sentence, he will shun the sin, just as much when
he imagines that others have involved him in it, as when he conceives
that he alone has brought it on himself. In short, the will neither is
nor can be determined by anything but the prospect of pleasure or pain;
and so long as consequences of this kind depend on his decisions, a man
will feel himself accountable. The sense of responsibility can never be
weakened by any system which, like those just noticed, retain the
doctrine of future retribution.”

This statement assumes that self-regarding motives, promises of
happiness, and threats of misery, are the sole powers for operating on
human character.

(2.) In reply, I submit as a second distinguishing feature of practical
Christianity, that it makes no great, certainly no exclusive, appeal to
the _prudential feelings_, as instruments of duty; treats them as
morally incapable of so sacred a work; and relies, chiefly and
characteristically, on affections of the heart, which no motives of
reward and punishment can have the smallest tendency to excite.

The Gospel, indeed, like all things divine, is unsystematic and unbound
by technical distinctions, and makes no metaphysical separation between
the will and the affections. It is too profoundly adapted to our nature,
not to address itself copiously to both. The doctrine of retribution
being a solemn truth, appears with all its native force in the teachings
of Christ, and arms many of his appeals with a persuasion just and
terrible. But never was there a religion (containing these motives at
all) so frugal in the use of them; so able, on fit occasions, to
dispense with them: so rich in those inimitable touches of moral beauty,
and tones that penetrate the conscience, and generous trust in the
better sympathies, which distinguish a morality of the affections. In
Christ himself, where is there a trace of the obedience of pious
self-interest, computing its everlasting gains, and making out a case
for compensation, by submitting to infinite wisdom? In his character,
which is the impersonation of his religion, we surely have a perfect
image of spontaneous goodness, unhaunted by the idea of personal
enjoyment, and, like that of God, unbidden but by the intuitions of
conscience, and the impulses of love. And what teacher less divine ever
made such high and bold demands on our disinterestedness? To lend out
our virtue upon interest,—to “love them only who love us” he pronounced
to be the sinners’ morality; nor was the feeling of duty ever reached,
but by those who could “do good, hoping for _nothing_ again,” except
that greatest of rewards to a true and faithful heart, to be “the
children of the Highest” who “is kind unto the unthankful and the evil.”
In the view of Jesus, all dealings between God and men were not of
bargain, but of affection. We must surrender ourselves to him without
terms; must be ashamed to doubt him who feeds the birds of the air, and,
like the lily of the field, look up to him with a bright and loving eye;
and he, for our much love, will pity and forgive us. In his own
ministry, how much less did our Lord rely for disciples on the cogency
of mere proof, and the inducements of hope and fear, than on the power
of moral sympathy, by which every one that was of God naturally loved
him and heard his words;[568] by which the good shepherd knew his sheep,
and they listened to his voice, and followed him;[569] and without which
no man could come unto him, for no spirit of the Father drew him.[570]
No condition of discipleship did Christ impose, save that of “faith in
him;” absolute trust in the spirit of his mind; a desire of
self-abandonment to a love and fidelity like his, without tampering with
expediency, or hesitancy in peril, or shrinking from death.

There is, then, a wide variance between the genius of Christianity, and
that philosophy which teaches, that all men must be bought over to the
side of goodness and of God, by a price suited to their particular form
of selfishness and appetite for pleasure. Our religion is remarkable for
the large confidence it reposes on the disinterested affections, and the
vast proportion of the work of life it consigns to them. And in thus
seeking to subordinate and tranquillize the prudential feelings, Christ
manifested how well he knew what was in man. He recognized the truth,
which all experience declares, that in these emotions is nothing great,
nothing loveable, nothing powerful; that their energy is perpetually
found incapable of withstanding the impetuosity of passion; and that all
transcendant virtues, all that brings us to tremble or to kneel, all the
enterprises and conflicts which dignify history, and have stamped any
new feature on human life, have had their origin in the disinterested
region of the mind; in affections, unconsciously entranced by some
object sanctifying and divine. He knew, for it was his special mission
to make all men feel, that it is the office of true religion to cleanse
the sanctuary of the secret affections, and effect a regeneration of the
heart. And this is a task which no direct _nisus_ of the will can
possibly accomplish, and to which, therefore, all offers of reward and
punishment, operating only on the will, are quite inapplicable. The
single function of volition is _to act_; over the executive part of our
nature it is supreme; over the emotional it is powerless; and all the
wrestlings of desire for self-cure and self-elevation, are like the
struggles of a child to lift himself. He who is anxious to be a
philanthropist, is admiring benevolence, instead of loving men; and
whoever is labouring to warm his devotion, yearns after piety, not after
God. The mind can by no spasmodic bound seize on a new height of
emotion, or change the light in which objects appear before its view.
Persuade the judgment, bribe the self-interests, terrify the
expectations, as you will, you can neither dislodge a favourite, nor
enthrone a stranger, in the heart. Show me a child that flings an
affectionate arm around a parent, and lights up his eyes beneath her
face, and I know that there have been no lectures there upon filial
love; but that the mother, being loveable, has _of necessity_ been
loved; for to genial minds it is as impossible to withhold a pure
affection, when its object is presented, as for the flower to sulk
within the mould, and clasp itself tight within the bud, when the gentle
force of spring invites its petals to curl out into the warm light. As
you reverence all good affections of our nature, and desire to awaken
them, never call them duties, though they be so; for so doing, you
address yourself to the will; and by hard trying no attachment ever
entered the heart. Never preach on their great desirableness and
propriety; for so doing, you ask audience of the judgment; and by way of
the understanding no glow of noble passion ever came. Never, above all,
reckon up their balance of good and ill; for so doing, you exhort
self-interest; and by that soiled way no true love will consent to pass.
Nay, never talk of them, nor even gaze curiously at them; for if they be
of any worth and delicacy, they will be instantly looked out of
countenance and fly. Nothing worthy of human veneration will condescend
to be embraced, but for its own sake: grasp it for its excellent
results,—make but the faintest offer to use it as a tool, and it slips
away at the very conception of such insult. The functions of a healthy
body go on, not by knowledge of physiology, but by the instinctive
vigour of nature; and you will no more brace the spiritual faculties to
noble energy and true life, by study of the uses of every feeling, than
you can train an athlete for the race, by lectures on every muscle of
every limb. The mind is not voluntarily active in the acquisition of any
great idea, any new inspiration of faith; but passive, fixed on the
object which has dawned upon it, and filled it with fresh light.

If this be true, and if it be the object of practical Christianity, not
only to direct our hands aright, but to inspire our hearts; then can its
ends never be achieved by the mere force of reward and punishment; then
no system can prove its sufficiency, by showing that it retains the
doctrine of retribution, and must even be held convicted of moral
incompetency, if it trusts the conscience mainly to the prudential
feelings, without due provision for enlisting the co-operation of many a
disinterested affection.

To this objection must any scheme be liable, which represents the
Creator as having made choice of the instrumentality of evil. I freely
admit, that no one urges the _personal_ motives to duty with more
closeness and force than the Necessarian. Maintaining, with the utmost
strictness, the connexion of moral cause and effect, teaching the
alliance of happiness with excellence, and of misery with vice, by a law
inexorable as fate, he convinces us, that every concession to
temptation, every relaxation of conscientious effort, is an addition of
wretchedness to our future lot; that when the evil volition has once
passed, no fortuity can provide evasion, nor any mercy give us shelter;
that on the decisions of our will is suspended whatever can make our
everlasting destination blessed. But his doctrine goes on to assure us,
that it is only to ourselves that our sins create any clear increase of
suffering; they are a part of the best possible system, designed for the
general good; and shown, by their occurrence, to be clear benefits to
the world. No love of our fellow-man, then, can be engaged in behalf of
duty; let conscience say what it will, we hold no power, and incur no
risk, of creating injury to others; and our sympathies with them cannot
reasonably determine any moral choice. No love of God can tender help to
our feeble virtue: for he is not “grieved in our sins;” and whether, in
our conflicts, we succumb or conquer, the issue is well-pleasing in his
sight. He appears to sustain a relation, not of concern, but of
indifference, to our choice; and the idea of him, as spectator of the
strife, inspires no courage, and brings no victory. If it be urged, that
these considerations are of too high and abstract a kind to influence us
in practice, and that to us our misconduct must always appear injurious
to men, and offensive to God; what is this but to allow the unfitness of
the doctrine to our minds, and to say, that it is harmless, in
proportion as it remains unrealized? It is a poor plea for the value of
a system to exclaim, “Never mind its threatened mischiefs, conscience is
too strong for them.” The point at which the present argument rests is
this, that _in so far as the doctrine operates_, it dismisses all but
the prudential feelings from the service of duty.

Our conclusion is evident. The spirit of practical Christianity gives a
double suffrage against the scheme which makes moral evil the
_instrument_ of God; and bids us regard it as his _enemy_. Revelation
allies itself with the primitive religion of the conscience.

To the theoretic question, still urged by our wonder and solicitude,
“But _whence_ this foe?” it has been already said, that no answer can be
given. All the ingenuities of logic and of language, leave it a mystery
still: and it is better to stand within the darkness in the quietude of
faith, than vainly to search for its margin in the restlessness of
knowledge. Were we compelled, for relief of mind, to select _some_
definite method of representing the case to our apprehensions, I know
not any simpler or better conception than that of the ancient
Platonists;—that the process of creation consisted, not in the
origination of matter itself out of nothing, but in the production of
form, order, beauty, organization, life, sentiency, out of matter,—in
making it the residence of mind, the receptacle of experience, and the
servitor of souls: that the Divine hand has manifested illimitable
skill, and the Divine love infinite versatility, in the use and
application of the original material; but that, as it is the negative
opposite to his positive perfections, its unsusceptibility of life and
spirit has occasioned the portion of evil which deforms the universe,
and which, however varied and reduced, and, in the higher gradations of
being, attenuated to the verge of extinction, cannot be utterly
annihilated. From the large proportion of visible evil, natural and
moral, that is traceable to disorganization and its related changes,
this view is easily apprehended, and may indeed be detected, in many
common forms of thought and speech. If it be not true, no better
substitute for the truth is within our reach. It limits the power of God
no more than the rival scheme: for were we to say, that he became the
author of evil, as the _unavoidable_ means of ulterior benefits, we
should admit, that _only on these terms_ was the contemplated good
producible, even by him whom, in relation to all our measures of force,
we justly call Omnipotent. It is impossible to escape, and therefore
better to confront, the idea of a NECESSITY, restricting the conditions
within which the Divine goodness operates;—a necessity, mysterious, but
not dreadful; not great enough to be subversive of faith, nor trivial
enough to be reasoned out of sight. I know not why our thoughts should
not find a residence for this necessity, rather in the materials
awaiting the Creative hand, than in any immaterial laws, under the
mystic title of “the Nature of things,” or (in other words,) any dark
Fate behind the throne. But in saying this, I only propose to _state the
problem_ in the most salutary form, and by no means to offer a solution:
mere pretension to ideas, where truly we have none, only excludes us
from the benefits (which are many) of our allotted portion of ignorance.
I have no sympathy with the confident and dogmatic spirit, which
exclaims, “Let the counsel of the Holy One draw nigh, that we may know
it;” and would only protest against systems that “call evil good, and
good evil,” that “put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”

Sin, then, in the sight of God and all good men, is to be esteemed an
evil, absolutely and everlastingly. We may rally the _whole_ power of
our nature against it: for it destroys our personal security; it
irremediably wounds our brother; and it puts us in dreary alienation
from our Father and our Judge. We may let loose our aversion to all that
offends the conscience, and without metaphysical hesitancy, visit it
with uncompromising hate; for so doing, we are indignant with no
instrument of Deity; nor do we fall into any sentiment at variance with
his. We may yield, with entire self-precipitation, to the love of
whatever things are pure and true and good; never fearing that our
affections will become too exclusive for the enlightened children of the
Highest. When we look into the darker chambers of our soul, and discern,
asleep or awake, the powers of selfishness, malice, jealousy,—we see
therein no nursery of discipline, where God presides to train us
ultimately well; but the dreadful dwelling of our familiar fiend who
wrestles in apostacy with God;—the palace of the penal furies that at
once tempt and torture us, a place severed by a whole universe from
Heaven;—the inner Hell of our immortal nature, so plenteous in solitary
agonies, that the addition of outward flames populous with tormented
beings would only refresh us with pity for their woes. The fever of
desire, the fires of revenge, the gnawing of remorse, still busy in our
immortality; the shame of resuscitated memories; the passionate yearning
after strength with the prostrate consciousness of weakness; the
strangeness and desolation of empty minds and heated appetites carried
to the assemblage of the skies, and gazed on by the pitying eye of a
Divine but alienated purity,—Oh! what flames can burn into tenderer
seats of anguish than these? And so far from planning and willing the
lapse of any into such guilt and suffering, the Great Ruler never ceases
to resist to the last, all such delay of his benediction and frustration
of his desire. He dwells absolutely apart from all creative contact with
the evil which we are bound to abhor: he comes before us as a being
unambiguously Holy; not in any ultimate and scarce intelligible way, but
in our plain human sense. His name must be reserved as the exclusive
receptacle of all the excellence and beauty, the majesty and tenderness,
the purity and justice, of which our minds can gather together the
ideas. It is no figure of speech, that there is _joy in heaven_ over the
sinner that repenteth: that part at least of heaven that dwells below
and hides itself within our hearts, that portion of God that expresses
itself through the sanctities of our nature, yields to our moral
restoration not only a ready welcome, but a mysterious help. When fear
has performed its proper and only function on a responsible being,—which
is, not to create holiness, but to arrest guilt; when it has summoned
us, like the prodigal, to ourselves again; when it has brought the mad
career to halt, and left us weeping, humbled, prostrate in the dust,
crying, “Lord, help us, we perish;”—then the Divine Spirit dawns on the
gloom of our self-abasement, and refreshes us with the delicious light
of a new and purer love: instead of the vain strivings of an enervated
will, the restless beating of mere prudence against the iron bars of
corrupt desire, the gates of the soul are burst silently open by some
angel affection, and we are free! And shall we not, with most devout
allegiance, follow our Divine Emancipator? The great work, which his
holy energy is thus ready to carry on within us, he may be discerned
conducting every where without us. On the theatre of the universe he is
himself engaged to grapple eternally with Evil, and hurl it from the
higher portion of his abode. And so, he waits, with his inspiring
sympathy, to hail every victory of our free-will: and by all the filial
love we bear him, by the generous fear of estrangement from his spirit,
by the hope of growth in his similitude, we are summoned to enter the
field of moral conflict,—to stir up the noble courage of our hearts, and
in the Lord’s own might, do battle with the confederate fiends of guilt
and woe. There is not elsewhere a combat so glorious, or a trophy so
divine.

NOTES.

---------------------

_Origin of the Doctrine of Two Principles._

The prominent place which the doctrine of two principles occupies in the
later theology of the Persians has procured for that people the
reputation of being the first to apprehend it; and for Zoroaster the
credit of assigning to it its due importance in the religious
reformation which he accomplished. So much doubt, however, exists,
respecting the age in which Zoroaster lived, the nature and extent of
the change which he introduced, and even on the question whether he
really taught the dualistic scheme at all, that he cannot justly deprive
the Ionian philosophers of a claim to originality in their resort to it.
If either before the Persian conquest of the Medes, or in the time of
Darius Hystaspes, this doctrine had been entrusted to the Magi, as
conservators of the national religion, it is difficult to account for
the omission of so fundamental a tenet in the account which Herodotus
gives of the Persian theology. The simple monotheism which the Father of
History describes, as seeking the mountain top in sacrifice, and calling
the whole circle of the heavens God,[571] can scarcely be the same with
the elaborate system of dualism, attributed by Plutarch to Zoroaster and
the Magi;[572] and the difference between the two accounts throws a
doubt on the antiquity of the latter doctrine in the East. Yet, on the
other hand, if we assign to it the most recent date of which the case
admits, we must allow that it formed part of the _popular belief_ in the
fourth century before Christ; in which case, it must have existed, at
least in its previous _philosophical_ _form_, in the fifth. A doctrine,
however, which had not yet assumed a mythological character, or drawn to
itself any external ceremonial, might easily escape the notice of
Herodotus. The Indian books, which contain the same tenet, are thought
by Friedrich von Schlegel to have borrowed it from Persia;[573] and
cannot therefore be adduced in separate proof of its high antiquity. On
the whole, there appears to be no evidence of its propagation among any
native Oriental people, before the brilliant period of art and
philosophy in the Greek cities of Asia Minor.

Even if it should be chronologically incorrect to affirm, that Ionian
speculation “anticipated” the oriental religions in their theological
and philosophical ideas, there is no sufficient reason to deny its
independence and originality. Though the Greek schools did not arise
till an opening intercourse with Egypt and the interior of Asia afforded
to their founders the _opportunity_ of borrowing from foreign sources,
it does not appear that they estimated this advantage highly enough to
avail themselves of it. Only a truly indigenous philosophy could have
left such distinct traces of a regular and progressive development,
beginning with the poetical cosmogonies of a purely mythological æra,
and growing, under the fostering care of successive teachers, into vast
speculative systems, bearing a relation, continually more obscure and
questionable, to the theology which gave them birth. Adverting to this
natural process, Mr. Thirlwall says: “It can excite no surprise that in
a period such as we are now reviewing, when thought and inquiry were
stimulated in so many new directions, some active minds should have been
attracted by the secrets of nature, and should have been led to grapple
with some of the great questions which the contemplation of the visible
universe suggests. There can therefore be no need of attempting to trace
the impulse by which the Greeks were now carried toward such researches,
to a foreign origin. But it is an opinion which has found many
advocates, that they were indebted to their widening intercourse with
other nations, particularly with Egypt, Phœnicia, and the interior of
Asia, for several of the views and doctrines which were fundamental or
prominent parts of their earlier philosophical systems. The result,
however, of the maturest investigation, seems to show that there is no
sufficient ground even for this conjecture.[574] On the other hand, it
is clear that the first philosophers were not wholly independent of the
earlier intellectual efforts of their own countrymen, and that, perhaps
unconsciously, they derived the form, if not, in part at least, the
substance of their speculations, from the old theogonies and
cosmogonies.[575]

The successive evolutions of the Pantheistic principle, and its final
renunciation by Anaxagoras, are thus succinctly described by Mr.
Thirlwall: “Thales evolved his world out of a single simple substance,
(_water_) to which he attributed the power of passing spontaneously
through the various transformations necessary for the multiplicity of
natural productions. But he does not seem to have attempted accurately
to define the nature of these transformations. And so most of his
successors, who set out from a similar hypothesis, contented themselves
with some vague notions, or phrases, about the successive expansions or
contractions of the original substance. But as the contemplation of
animal life had led Anaximenes to adopt _air_ as the basis of his
system, a later philosopher, Diogenes of Apollonia, carried this analogy
a step further, and regarded the universe as issuing from an intelligent
principle, by which it was at once vivified and ordered—a rational, as
well as sensitive soul—still without recognizing any distinction between
matter and mind. Much earlier, however, Anaximander of Miletus, who
flourished not long after Thales, and is generally considered as his
immediate disciple, seems to have been struck by the difficulty of
accounting for the changes which a simple substance must be supposed to
undergo, in order to produce an infinite variety of beings. He found it
easier, in conformity with some of the ancient cosmogonies, to conceive
the primitive state of the universe as a vast chaos, for which he had no
other name than the infinite,—containing all the elements out of which
the world was to be constructed, by a process of separation and
combination, which, however, he considered as the result of a motion,
not impressed on it from without, but inherent in the mass. This
hypothesis, which tended to give an entirely new direction to the
speculations of the school, seems to have been treated with a neglect
which it is difficult to explain, and which has raised a suspicion that
some less celebrated names may have dropped out of the list of the
Ionian philosophers. But a century after Anaximander, Anaxagoras of
Clazomenæ revived his doctrine with some very fanciful additions, and
one very important change. He combined the principle of Anaximander with
that of his contemporary Diogenes, and acknowledged a supreme mind,
distinct from the chaos to which it imparted motion, form, and order.
The Pantheistic systems of the Ionian school were only independent of
the popular creed, and did not exclude it. The language of Thales and
Heraclitus, who declared that the universe was full of gods, left room
for all the fictions of the received mythology, and might even add new
fervour to the superstition of the vulgar. But the system of Anaxagoras
seems to have been felt to be almost irreconcilable with the prevailing
opinions, and hence, as we shall find, drew upon him hatred and
persecution.”[576]

In confirmation of the opinions expressed towards the close of this
Lecture, I cannot refrain from subjoining the following moral estimate
of the doctrine of two principles: it is from F. von Schlegel’s
Treatise, before alluded to, on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians.
“Pantheism inevitably destroys the distinction between good and evil,
however strenuously its advocates may contend in words against this
reproach; the doctrine of emanation depresses the moral freedom of the
will by the idea of an infinite degree of innate guilt, and the belief
that every being is predestined to crime and misery; the system of two
principles, and the warfare between good and evil, holds the middle
place between these extremes: it becomes, itself, a powerful incentive
to a similar contest, and a source of the purest morality.”[577]

_Hebrew Names for the Evil Spirit._

The mere fact, that no proper names for the Evil Spirit exist in the
Hebrew language, except such as are of Apocryphal or Rabbinical
creation, is in itself a sufficient proof of the late and unscriptural
origin of the belief in his existence. A glance at an English
concordance will make it evident, that the word “Devil,” in the singular
number, does not occur in our authorized translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures. It is found in the plural in Lev. xvii. 7, 2 Chron. xi. 15,
Deut. xxxii. 17, Ps. cvi. 37; and in none of these instances can it for
a moment be supposed that the original word, if used in the singular,
would represent any idea corresponding to the popular notion of the
Devil; indeed, when the Rabbinical writers needed a name for the
expression of this idea, they had recourse to other terms than those
which are found in the verses just cited. In the two latter passages,
the Hebrew word is שׁדים, literally, _mighty beings_; it clearly denotes
_false gods_, and probably designates them by the title applied to them
by their votaries; for the name is evidently not contemptuous, and is
indeed radically the same which was applied by the Israelites to
Jehovah, and receives in our version the translation _Almighty_. In the
two former passages, the word is שׂעירים, literally, _goats_, and
evidently denotes the heathen deities, typified under the form of that
animal; especially, we may suppose, the Egyptian Pan, worshipped in the
Mendesian nome,[578] with rites the most abominable. In Isaiah xiii. 21,
the common translation renders the same word _satyrs_.

Several names of evil spirits occur in the Talmudical writings: and
among them are two which are appropriated to the Satanic chief, viz.,
סמאל, _Samael_; and אשמדי, _Asmodæus_. The latter is the term by which
the evil spirit is designated in Tobit iii. 8: and it would be easy to
show, by a multitude of passages, that the being to whom both these
names were given corresponded to the “Devil” of modern theology, as far
as correspondence can be affirmed to exist between any two creations of
the imagination. Thus we are told, in words which also show the use of
the word _Satan_ as a generic rather than a proper name; “The wicked
angel Samael is prince of _all the Satans_,” סמאל הרשע ראש כל השטנים
הוא‎.[579] Again, Jehovah is represented as saying to him, under his
title of Angel of Death (מלאך המות) “I have made thee Ruler of the
world,” שעשיתי איתך קוזמוקרטור (κοσμοκράτορα).[580] The same supremacy
is attributed to this being under his other name. Thus it is said, that
when Solomon became too much elated by his prosperity, there was sent to
him “Asmodæus, the Prince of evil spirits,” אשמדיי מלכא דשדים‎.[581] And
with slight variation of phrase he is described as “the devil Asmodæus,
the Prince of Spirits,” שידא אשמדון רבהון דרוחתא‎‎. [582] Buxtorf
identifies Samael and Asmodæus, on the authority of R. Elias; he says,
“Eundem esse _Asmodæum_, qui alio nomine Rabbinis dicitur
_Samael_.”[583] And Bertholdt again identifies this being with the enemy
of the Gospel described in 2 Cor. iv. 4, as ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου;
and in John xiv. 30, as ὁ τοῦ κόσμου [τούτου] ἄρχων: after quoting these
phrases, he says “Apud Targumistas et Rabbinos occurrit sub nomine סמאל
_Samael_.”[584]

The idea then of which we are in search, is unquestionably of frequent
occurrence among the Talmudists. In expressing it they have recourse to
new names not found in the Canonical writings. Surely a strong
presumption arises, that the Hebrew Scriptures did not furnish them with
the means of designating the personage about whom they discoursed.

_The parallel Passages in the Epistles of Jude and 2 Peter._

For the sake of those readers of the English Scriptures who may not have
noticed the remarkable similarity between the Epistle of Jude, and the
second chapter of the second Epistle of Peter, I subjoin a comparison of
the two. A reference to the Greek Testament will make it evident, that
the parallelism is fairly exhibited in our common translation. My
present purpose, at least, will be sufficiently answered by taking the
citations thence.

2 Peter ii. Jude.

1 ... There shall be false teachers 4. For there are certain men crept
among you, who privily shall bring in unawares, who were before of old
in damnable heresies, even denying ordained to this condemnation,
the Lord that bought them, and ungodly men, turning the grace of
bring upon themselves swift our God into lasciviousness, and
destruction. denying the only Lord God, and our
3. And through covetousness shall Lord Jesus Christ.
they with feigned words make
merchandise of you: whose judgment
now of a long time lingereth not,
and their damnation slumbereth not.

4. For if God spared not the angels 6. And the angels which kept not
that sinned, but cast them down to their first estate, but left their
hell, and delivered them into own habitation, he hath reserved in
chains of darkness, to be reserved everlasting chains under darkness
unto judgment: unto the judgment of the great day.

6. And turning the cities of Sodom 7. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and
and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned the cities about them in like
them with an overthrow, making them manner, giving themselves over to
an ensample unto those that after fornication, and going after
should live ungodly: strange flesh, are set forth for an
example, suffering the vengeance of
eternal fire.

10. But chiefly them that walk 8. Likewise also these filthy
after the flesh in the lust of dreamers defile the flesh, despise
uncleanness, and despise dominion, and speak evil of
government. Presumptuous are they, dignities.
self-willed, they are not afraid to
speak evil of dignities.

11. Whereas angels, which are 9. Yet Michael the archangel, when
greater in power and might, bring contending with the Devil he
not railing accusation against them disputed about the body of Moses,
before the Lord. durst not bring against him a
railing accusation, but said, The
Lord rebuke thee.

12. But these, as natural brute 10. But these speak evil of those
beasts, made to be taken and things which they know not: but
destroyed, speak evil of the things what they know naturally, as brute
that they understand not; and shall beasts, in those things they
utterly perish in their own corrupt themselves.
corruption.

13 ... Spots they are and 12. These are spots in your feasts
blemishes, sporting themselves with of charity, when they feast with
their own deceivings while they you, feeding themselves without
feast with you. fear.

17. These are wells without water, 12. Clouds they are without water,
clouds that are carried with a carried about of winds;...
tempest; to whom the mist of 13. ... Wandering stars, to whom is
darkness is reserved for ever. reserved the blackness of darkness
for ever.

18. For when they speak great 16. These are murmurers,
swelling words of vanity, they complainers, walking after their
allure through the lusts of the own lusts; and their mouth speaketh
flesh, through much wantonness, great swelling words, having men’s
those that were clean escaped from persons in admiration because of
them who live in error. advantage.

Very few readers, it is probable, will rise from the examination of this
parallelism, without the persuasion, that the writings betraying it
cannot be independent productions; and without amazement at the opinion
of Lardner, that “the similitude of the subject might produce,” to such
extent, “a resemblance of style. The design,” he continues, “of St.
Peter and St. Jude was to condemn some loose and erroneous Christians,
and to caution others against them. When speaking of the same sort of
persons, their style and figures of speech would have a great
agreement.”[585] Lardner appears to shrink from attributing to the
inspired St. Jude (supposing him to be the later writer) either
plagiarism or a needless repetition of instruction.[586] But why should
his inspiration deter him from such an act? It rather affords, as
Michaelis observes, a conclusive reason for ascribing it to him. “For
the Holy Ghost,” this author suggests, “certainly knew, while he was
dictating the Epistle to St. Jude, that an Epistle of St. Peter, of a
like import, already existed. And if the Holy Ghost, notwithstanding
this knowledge, still thought that an Epistle of St. Jude was not
unnecessary, why shall we suppose that St. Jude himself would have been
prevented from writing by the same knowledge?”[587] This argument of the
learned German certainly renders it unnecessary to _doubt_, with the
scrupulous Lardner, whether St. Jude would copy from a fellow-labourer’s
letter: but then, it also renders it unnecessary to _believe_ this: for
with the perfect familiarity which the _Holy Ghost_ possessed (“while
dictating”) with the previous epistle of Peter, there was no occasion
whatever for _St. Jude_ to have the knowledge too. Indeed so completely
might any degree of parallelism be explained in this way, that no
conceivable phenomena of agreement would furnish the slightest proof
that the one writer had seen the production of the other.

For some inscrutable reasons, however, all the ablest theologians seem
to have declined this easy solution, by appeal to the memory of the Holy
Ghost; and to have been convinced that some method, simply human, must
be sought, to account for the accordance between these two epistles.
Some have supposed, with Bishop Sherlock, that both authors drew their
materials from a common source, the imagery and phraseology of which
they freely used. But as Eichhorn has well observed, “Bare conjecture is
an insufficient support for this supposition; in the absence of all
trace of any document giving plausibility to the suggestion, by
disclosing a source in common relation with the corresponding passages
of the two epistles.”[588] If this explanation be untenable, nothing
remains but to conclude that one of the writers copied from the other;
and this, accordingly, has been the general opinion of theologians.
This, however, is the only point on which critics are agreed: for when
the question is proposed, whether St. Peter or St. Jude were the
original writer, it is curious to observe the confidence with which each
of the two answers may be returned, and the opposite views which may be
taken of the considerations affecting the decision. In the absence of
all external evidence, the intrinsic character of the two compositions
must determine our reply: and the chief impression which results from a
comparison of them is, that St. Jude has expressed his ideas with more
succinctness and unity; St. Peter with more vagueness and amplification.
Appealing to this circumstance, Dr. Hug says, “the critic cannot fail to
perceive which was the original;” “it is evident that the passages of
Peter are periphrases and amplifications;” “the _originality of Jude is
clear_ from the comparison of both authors, and especially from the
language;” “Peter had, therefore, the Epistle of Jude before him, and in
his own manner applied it to his purposes.”[589] Michaelis, however,—who
rejects the Epistle of Jude, and says that, “judging by its contents,”
we “have no inducement to believe it a sacred and divine work,”—ventures
on the following confident statements: “No doubt can be made, that the
second Epistle of St. Peter was, in respect to the Epistle of St. Jude,
the original and not the copy:” “with respect to the date of this
(Jude’s) Epistle, _all that I am able to assert_ is, that it was written
_after_ the second Epistle of St. Peter;” “this appears from a
comparison of the two, which are so similar to each other both in
sentiments and in expressions, as no two epistles could well be, unless
the author of the one had read the epistle of the other. It is evident
therefore that St. Jude borrowed from St. Peter both expressions and
arguments, to which he himself has made some few additions.”[590]

After reading these positive statements on either side, we are struck
with the justice of the following remark of Eichhorn’s: referring to the
differences between the two epistles in respect to their style, he says:
“These phenomena admit of a twofold explanation. Peter might be regarded
as the original and Jude as the copy; inasmuch as, in the process of
revision, a writing may become more perfect in the expression and
disposition of the ideas: the superfluities will naturally be
retrenched, the march of the thoughts become quicker, the diction more
choice; the copyist having the matter all before him, and being able to
direct his attention exclusively to the form which it shall assume. But
with just as much truth we might turn round and say,—Jude was the
original, whom Peter illustrated, amplified, and paraphrased. In the
process, the style lost its unity, its compactness, its clear outline:
the paraphrast interrupted the succession of thoughts with several
foreign ideas; and the exposition of the subject thus became more
obscure, prolix, and disorderly. Who can decide between these two
possibilities?”

This acute author does not, however, consider the problem of impossible
solution. The suspense in which its difficulty holds us, continues, he
observes, “only so long as we confine ourselves merely to a mutual
comparison of the parallel passages. If we look at them in their
relation to the whole of St. Peter’s second epistle, we find a reason
for concluding that Jude is original, Peter the copyist. The author of
the _second chapter_ of Peter does not stand, as a writer, on his own
ground: if he did, his mode of writing would be the same as in the
_first and third chapters_, which, however, is not the case. It is clear
that we cannot apply to Jude this test of originality, derived from
consistency of style; for we possess no other composition of his, with
which to compare his epistle. Yet there is a compactness and unity in
his writing, from which its independent character may be inferred.
Whoever is content to take up the thoughts of others, yet not without
introducing something of his own, is easily drawn aside by accessory
ideas; by which the definite outline of a composition is lost. This is
by no means the case in the epistle of Jude.”[591]

It is generally admitted, then, that these two productions, as far as
their topics coincide, constitute but one authority: and we shall
follow, I think, the most judicious criticism, if we assign that
authority, whatever it may be, to the epistle of Jude. Whence, then, did
he derive his knowledge of such circumstances as those which are
mentioned in the sixth and ninth verses, respecting “the angels which
kept not their first estate,” and “Michael the archangel contending with
the Devil” “about the body of Moses?” There are but three supposable
sources; immediate personal inspiration; the Hebrew Scriptures; or some
non-canonical and unauthoritative work.

The first of these suppositions I do not find to be maintained by any
creditable theological writer; and it may be dismissed with the
following remarks of Michaelis:—“The dispute between Michael and the
Devil about the body of Moses, has by no means the appearance of a true
history: and the author of our epistle has not even hinted that he knew
it to be true by the aid of Divine inspiration, or that he distinguished
it from other Jewish traditions. On the contrary, he has introduced it
as part of a story, with which his readers were already acquainted: he
does not appear to have had any other authority for it, than they
themselves had: nor does the part which he has quoted at all imply,
either that he himself doubted, or that he wished his readers should
doubt, of the other parts of it.”[592]

The second supposition, that the writer makes no allusion, on these
points of celestial history, to any thing beyond the Old Testament, is
so universally regarded as untenable, that even Lardner’s great
authority will hardly avail to procure it any further attention. In what
part of the Hebrew Scriptures St. Jude obtained his information
respecting the fallen angels, Lardner, while deploring a like omission
on the part of his predecessors, has neglected to explain. And when, in
order to connect the story of Michael and the Devil with Zach. iii. 1-3,
he is obliged to construe “_the body of Moses_,” into _the Israelitish
people_, it surely becomes evident that the consideration of this
passage never fully engaged his incomparable judgment.[593] Happily,
Lardner’s is a reputation of which there is no need to be economical:
and even theological opponents cannot apply to him the description
which, with some truth and more severity, they have given of Mr.
Wakefield, as a “scholar, who was great among Unitarians, but not among
scholars:”—

“Quem bis terque bonum cum risu miror; et idem
Indignor, quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus?”

There remains, then, but the third supposition, that St. Jude derived
these notices of the supernatural world from some apocryphal and
traditional work. And we need the less scruple to admit this, as he
himself intimates the fact, in the fourteenth verse, where he refers to
the _Book of Enoch_. This work professes to be extant in the Æthiopic
language; and the copies of it contain the passage cited by St. Jude:
and whatever doubts may attach to Bishop Lawrance’s opinion, that we
have it substantially as it was originally written shortly before the
time of Christ, the citations from the “Book of Enoch,” by Syncellus,
and the references to it by both Greek and Latin Fathers, are too
numerous and ancient, to leave it questionable that such a work existed,
and was in use not long after the Christian era, and probably before.
Hug gives this account of it:—“The Book of Enoch, in fact, was full of
Jewish, Theurgical, and Magical reveries, as indeed the character of the
person, to whom this writing was ascribed, required it to be. According
to Eupolemus, he is said to have been the inventor of Astrology, or
rather a scholar of the Angels in this science, who initiated him into
the mysteries of it; for he had at one time obtained a mission to the
Angels, on which occasion he probably received their instruction. But it
did not suffice, that he was acquainted with the course of the planets,
the position of the Heavens, and their signification; but he likewise,
as the Jews and other Easterns maintained, learned in addition from the
heavenly natures, the art of prognostication, characters, offerings,
purifications, lustrations, and other things of this description, which
he imparted to mankind. According to these ideas, which were entertained
of him far and wide among Jews, Arabians, and others, we can easily
determine, to what sort of literature his writings must belong. The
remains of it, which we find in the Church-Fathers also, do not deceive
this expectation.”[594]

Though this is the only Apocryphal production to which St. Jude refers
by name, Origen informs us, in a passage already cited, that the
adventure between Michael and the Devil was taken from a work entitled
Ἀνάληψις or Ἀνάβασις τοῦ Μωσέως. “From a comparison of the relation in
this book with St. Jude’s quotation,” says Michaelis, “he was thoroughly
persuaded, that it was the book from which St. Jude quoted. This he
asserts without the least hesitation: and in consequence of this
persuasion, he himself has quoted the Assumption of Moses, as a work of
authority, in proof of the temptation of Adam and Eve by the Devil. But
as he has quoted it merely for this purpose, he has given us only an
imperfect account of what this book contained, relative to the dispute
about the body of Moses. One circumstance, however, he has mentioned,
which is not found in the epistle of St. Jude, namely, that Michael
reproached the Devil with having possessed the serpent which seduced
Eve. In what manner this circumstance is connected with the dispute
about the body of Moses will appear from the following consideration.
The Jews imagined the person of Moses was so holy, that God could find
no reason for permitting him to die: and that nothing but the sin
committed by Adam and Eve in paradise, which brought death into the
world, was the cause why Moses did not live for ever. The same notions
they entertained of some other very holy persons, for instance of Isai,
who, they say, was delivered to the angel of death, merely on account of
the sins of our first parents, though he himself did not deserve to die.
Now in the dispute between Michael and the Devil about Moses, the Devil
was the accuser, and demanded the death of Moses. Michael therefore
replied to him, that he himself was the cause of that sin, which alone
could occasion the death of Moses. How very little such notions as these
agree, either with the Christian theology, or with Moses’ own writings,
it is unnecessary for me to declare.”[595]

The direct testimony of Origen should be taken in connexion with the
well-known fact, that this story of Michael and the Devil is one of the
standing traditions of the Jewish people; the invention of a remote
antiquity; and repeated ever since by a multitude of Rabbinical writers.
A specimen of the legend may be found by the curious in the section of
Michaelis, from which I have quoted the foregoing passage. With respect
to the reception which we must give to such an alleged fact, the same
author observes—“It lies without the circle of human experience; and
therefore it cannot be attested by any man, unless he has either divine
inspiration, or has intercourse with beings of a superior order.
Consequently, whoever was the author of the apocryphal book, from which
the quotation was made, his account cannot possibly command
assent.”[596] This remark evidently applies, not only to the story of
Michael, but to the tradition of the Fallen Angels; which, there is
every reason to believe, must have been derived from a like apocryphal
source; especially as we have the express assurance of Tertullian, that
the Book of Enoch treated of the nature, offices, and fate of fallen
Beings.[597]

This author, then, has unquestionably “made use of Jewish materials,
which have no existence but in apocryphal books,”[598] and therefore no
claim on our belief. “I know of no other method of vindicating the
quotation,” says Michaelis, “than by supposing that St. Jude considered
the whole story, not as a real fact, which either he himself believed,
or which he required his readers to believe, but merely as an
instructive fable, which served to illustrate the doctrine which he
himself inculcated, that we ought not to speak evil of dignities.”[599]
Hug resorts to an explanation of this kind; and conceives that St. Jude
employs apocryphal weapons of persuasion, as best adapted to confound
the Heretics whom he assailed.[600] It may be so: but if his
illustrations and examples from the supernatural world be thus destitute
of intrinsic authority and truth, and _we must be heretics before we can
feel their force_, what becomes of the _orthodox doctrine_ of fallen
Angels?

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture XI.

Footnote 542:

See Note A.

Footnote 543:

Genesis iii. 1.

Footnote 544:

Genesis iii. 14, 15.

Footnote 545:

Jos. Ant. lib. i. c. 1.

Footnote 546:

The first trace of this fiction presents itself in the Apocryphal book
of the Wisdom of Solomon, ii. 24; “Nevertheless, through envy of the
Devil, came death into the world.” How difficult it appeared, even to
the learned and imaginative Origen, to establish this interpretation
on any sound scriptural authority, may be seen in the fact, that he
can quote in its behalf nothing better than an unknown Jewish work in
the Greek language, entitled Ἀνάληψις τοῦ Μωσέως. In Rufinus’s version
of Origen’s “Principles,” occurs the following passage: “In Genesi
serpens Evam seduxisse describitur; de quo in Ascensione Möysi, cujus
libelli meminit in epistolâ suâ Apostolus Judas, Michaël archangelus
cum Diabolo disputans de corpore Möysi, ait, _a Diabolo inspiratum
serpentem_, causam exstitisse prævaricationis Adæ et Evæ.”—De Princip.
lib. iii. c. 2. Though the learned Father does not hesitate to cite
this book, for a theological purpose, he does not inform us of the
grounds on which he was satisfied to invest it with divine authority.

Footnote 547:

Genesis iii. 16-19.

Footnote 548:

Rom. v. 12-20; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22; 1 Tim. ii. 14.

Footnote 549:

Paraphrase on Romans. Note on v. 12. See also Whitby in loc., to whom
Mr. Locke refers.

Footnote 550:

See Rom. i. 16; ii. 29; and iii. 9-23.

Footnote 551:

Genesis iii. 15.

Footnote 552:

Dr. T. Sherlock’s Six Discourses on Prophecy, p. 80; as quoted in Mr.
Wellbeloved’s excellent note on the passage.

Footnote 553:

See Note B.

Footnote 554:

1 Samuel xxix. 4.

Footnote 555:

1 Kings xi. 25.

Footnote 556:

Numb. xxii. 22.

Footnote 557:

1 Tim. i. 20.

Footnote 558:

‏שׁטן ‎(1.) _adversarius_; in antiquiori Hebraismo homo, ut in 1 Sam.
xxix. 4; 2 Sam. xix. 23; 1 Reg. v. 4; xi. 14; xxiii. 25: in sequiori,
post exilium Babylonicum, angelus malus sive _diabolus_, qui κατ’
ἐξοχὴν _Satan_ vocatur, Ps. cix. 6; Zach. iii. 1, 2; 1 Chron. xxi. 1.
(2.) _circuitor_, qui civium motus observat; secundum quosdam, Hiob.
i. 6, 8; ii. 1.”—_Joh. Simonis Lex. Hebr. in verb._

In Ps. cix. 6, and Zach. iii. 1, 2, there is, however, no reason to
suppose that the word is used as a proper name. The former of the two
passages is best rendered, “Let _an accuser_ stand at his right hand:”
and in explanation of the latter, Archbishop Newcome cites the
following note from Dr. Blayney; “It appears to me most probable, that
by Satan, or the Adversary, is here meant the adversaries of the
Jewish nation in a body, or perhaps some leading person among them,
Sanballat for instance, who strenuously opposed the rebuilding of the
temple, and of course the restoration of the service of the sanctuary,
and the reestablishment of Joshua in the exercise of his sacerdotal
ministry.”—_Newcome’s Minor Prophets, in loc._

Footnote 559:

1 Chron. xxi. 1.

Footnote 560:

2 Sam. xxiv. 1.

Footnote 561:

Wisd. ii. 24; Tobit iii. 8.

Footnote 562:

On entering the creed of the Jews, this doctrine underwent another
change, of which many traces are to be found in all their subsequent
writings, and which throws light on several passages of the New
Testament. It is thus stated by Dr. D. F. Strauss: “When that Satan
who appears in the Persian religion as a wicked being inimical to
mankind, passed into the Jewish faith, his character was accommodated
to the Hebrew peculiarity, which confined to the people of Israel all
that is good and worthy of humanity; and he was regarded as at once
the special enemy of their nation, and the Lord of their Gentile foes.
The interests of the Jewish people becoming concentrated in the person
of the Messiah, it was natural that the Satan should be conceived of
as the personal opponent of the Messiah.” “Accordingly,” adds this
writer, “in the New Testament the idea of Jesus as the Messiah
everywhere involves that of Satan as the adversary of his person and
work.”[b] We may well object to the unqualified generalization
comprised in this last remark, and therefore to many of the author’s
particular applications of it; and especially we must regard as
unsuccessful his attempt to destroy the historical character of the
narrative of our Lord’s temptation; but no judicious interpreter will
wholly neglect the suggestion which the passage contains.

Footnote b:

Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet, § 55.

Footnote 563:

Jude 6; 2 Pet. ii. 4.

Footnote 564:

See Note C.

Footnote 565:

Mr. Stowell, in his Lecture on the Personality and Agency of Satan
(pp. 703, 704), intimates that probably no visible form presented
itself to Jesus: and though strongly, and as it appears to me
reasonably, objecting to the interpretation which resolves the whole
temptation into a _vision_, he supposes, with more latitude than
consistency of explanation, that the Devil “showed” to our Lord all
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,—not really and
objectively,—but by means of “a glowing though _scenical
representation_.” The Lecturer does not state whether he conceives the
solicitations of Satan to have been conveyed by the method of real and
organic _talking_: but if, in the peculiar style of this narrative,
the Tempter can be described as “_showing_” things without the
presence of any visible objects, he may be described as “_saying_”
things without the presence of any audible sounds. English orthodoxy,
in conformity with the gross and hard materialism which pervades it,
seems to have encouraged the idea, that all preternatural
communications, whether diabolic or divine, with the human mind, must
be made by articulate noises or sensible images; that the action of
spirit on spirit is inconceivable; and a _revelation in silence and
darkness a thing impossible_. Adverting to this prejudice, the
admirable Barclay says, “We must not think his” (Abraham’s) “faith was
built upon his outward senses, but proceeded from the secret
persuasion of God’s spirit in his heart;”—“by which many times faith
is begotten and strengthened without any of these outward and visible
helps; as we may observe in many passages of the Holy Scriptures,
where it is only mentioned, ‘_And God said_,’ &c., ‘_And the word of
the Lord came_’ unto such and such, ‘_saying_,’ &c. But if any one
should pertinaciously affirm, _that this did import an outward audible
voice to the carnal ear_, I would gladly know, what other argument
such an one could bring, for this his affirmation, saving his own
simple conjecture. It is said indeed, ‘_The Spirit witnesseth with our
spirit_;’ but not to our outward ears, Rom. viii. 16. And seeing the
Spirit of God is within us, and not without us only, it speaks to our
spiritual, and not to our bodily ear. Therefore I see no reason, where
it’s so often said in Scripture, ‘_The Spirit said_,’ ‘_moved_,’
‘_hindered_,’ ‘_called_,’ such or such a one, to _do_ or _forbear_
such or such a thing, that any have to conclude, that this was not an
inward voice to the ear of the soul, rather than an outward voice to
the bodily ear. If any be otherwise minded, let them, if they can,
produce their arguments, and we may further consider of
them.”—_Barclay’s Apology for the true Christian Divinity, Prop. II._

Footnote 566:

Mr. Stowell’s Lecture, p. 713.

Footnote 567:

Ibid. p. 695.

Footnote 568:

John viii. 42, 47.

Footnote 569:

John x. 14, 27.

Footnote 570:

John vi. 44.

Footnote 571:

Οἱ δὲ νομίζουσι Διὶ μὲν, ἐπὶ τὰ ὑψηλότατα τῶν οὐρέων ἀναβαίνοντες,
θυσίας ἔρδειν, τὸν κύκλον πάντα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ Δία καλέοντες. i. 131.

Footnote 572:

De Iside et Osiride, § 46, 47.

Footnote 573:

See his Treatise, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier: an
abstract of which, with a translation of the portions relating to the
dualistic system, will be found in Dr. Prichard’s Analysis of the
Egyptian Mythology, Book III.

Footnote 574:

We allude to Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie), who (i. p. 159-173)
has weighed all the arguments which have been alleged in behalf of
this opinion with an even hand.

Footnote 575:

Thirlwall’s History of Greece, Vol. II. pp. 130, 131.

Footnote 576:

Vol. II. pp. 134, 135.

Footnote 577:

Dr. Prichard’s Translation. Egyp. Myth. pp. 242, 243.

Footnote 578:

Bochart’s Hierozoicon. P. I. lib. ii. p. 640. seqq. Herod. II. 46.

Footnote 579:

Elleh Haddebarim rabba, fol. 302. 2. ap. D. L. Bertholdt’s
Christologia Judæorum Jesu Apostolorumque ætate. § 36.

Footnote 580:

Vajikra rabba, fol. 151. col. 1. ap. Bertholdt. _loc. cit._

Footnote 581:

Targum in Eccles. i. 12. ap. Joh. Buxtorf. Lex. Chald. Talm. & Rabb.
in v. אשמדי.

Footnote 582:

Aruch ex Rabboth. ap. Lightfoot’s Hebr. and Talmud. Exercitations on
Matt. xii. 24. See also on Luke xi. 15.

Footnote 583:

Lex. Chald. _loc. cit._

Footnote 584:

Christologia, _loc. cit._

Footnote 585:

Credibility of the Gospel History. Supplement, ch. xxi.

Footnote 586:

“It seems very unlikely that St. Jude should write so similar an
epistle, if he had seen St. Peter’s. In that case, St. Jude would not
have thought it needful for him to write at all. If he had formed a
design of writing, and had met with an epistle of one of the apostles,
very suitable to his own thoughts and intentions, I think he would
have forborne to write.”—Cred. _loc. cit._

Footnote 587:

Michaelis’ Introd. to the N. T. ch. xxix. sec. 2.

Footnote 588:

Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das neue Testament, viii. 3.

Footnote 589:

Dr. J. L. Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament: translated by Dr.
Wait. Sec. 169, 170.

Footnote 590:

Marsh’s Michaelis, ch. xxviii. sec. 1; ch. xxix. sec. 2, 5.

Footnote 591:

Einleitung in d. N. T. viii. 3.

Footnote 592:

Marsh’s Michaelis, ch. xxix. sec. 4.

Footnote 593:

For a sufficient refutation of Lardner’s interpretation, see the
last-cited section of Marsh’s Michaelis.

Footnote 594:

Hug’s Introduction, sec. 175.

Footnote 595:

Marsh’s Michaelis, ch. xxix. sec. 4.

Footnote 596:

Marsh’s Mich. _loc. cit._

Footnote 597:

De habitu mulier. c. 3. De Idolat. c. 4. et 15. De cultu fœminar. c.
10, as cited by Hug, sec. 175.

Footnote 598:

Eichhorn’s Einl. viii. 4. § 296.

Footnote 599:

_loc. cit._ Michaelis adds a hint, which may perhaps be as appropriate
in England as in Germany: “To the doctrine, which St. Jude inculcates
by this quotation, that we ought not to speak evil of dignities, not
even of the fallen angels, but that we should leave judgment to God, I
have no objection. And I really think, that they transgress the bounds
of propriety, who make it their business, either in the pulpit or in
their writings, to represent the devil as an object of detestation;
since, notwithstanding his fall, he is still a being of a superior
order. This reminds me of a certain oriental sect, which Niebuhr met
with in the neighbourhood of the river Zab, in Assyria, and which, for
the same reason as that which I have just assigned, will not suffer
any one to speak evil of the devil.”

Footnote 600:

_loc. cit._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

LECTURE XII.

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF RETRIBUTION HEREAFTER.

BY REV. HENRY GILES.

“AND GOD SAID TO JONAH, DOEST THOU WELL TO BE ANGRY FOR THE GOURD? AND
HE SAID, I DO WELL TO BE ANGRY, EVEN UNTO DEATH. THEN SAID THE LORD,
THOU HAST PITY ON THE GOURD FOR WHICH THOU HAST NOT LABOURED, NEITHER
MADEST IT GROW; WHICH CAME UP IN A NIGHT AND PERISHED IN A NIGHT. AND
SHOULD NOT I SPARE NINEVEH, THAT GREAT CITY, WHEREIN ARE MORE THAN
SIX SCORE THOUSAND PERSONS THAT CANNOT DISCERN BETWEEN THEIR RIGHT
HAND AND THEIR LEFT?”—_Jonah_ iv. 9, 10, 11.

Pain affects us, as it comes near to us. The war or famine, or any other
calamity that afflicts a nation afar off, is but a vague report or a
distant rumour; it may not pass unheard, but comparatively it is unfelt.
It requires that grief shall touch and sting us in our selfishness; that
we may know fully and truly what it inflicts on others. And it is thus
that God at once rebukes and cures our insensibility, by bringing loss
and sorrow home to our own souls: the withered gourd wrung tears from
the surly and unamiable prophet: but the prospect of Nineveh with her
mighty population in ashes had nothing with which to touch the fountains
of his sorrows.

Admitting as I thus do that there is much of selfishness in our nature,
yet persuaded that there is also much of sympathy and mercy in it,
taking either the character of God, or that of man as a criterion, I
have long regarded the belief of eternal punishment as one of those
moral paradoxes which you cannot deny, and for which you cannot account.
Most of human creatures, so far as they accord with their humanity,
shrink from inflicting or beholding pain; and when they can inflict it
wantonly, or behold it without compassion, we can pronounce on them no
sentence of deeper reprobation than to call them _inhuman_. We tread not
knowingly on the crawling worm; we hear not insensibly the inarticulate
voice of the sick and dumb animal: and yet many of us who would not look
unmoved on the last spasms of an expiring dog, can believe that God
regards with ruthless sternness the eternal tortures of numberless
eternal spirits. We cannot gaze without compassion on the tear in the
infant’s speechless eye, and yet some of us can believe that God has
created such beings to look up through all eternity from hopeless
torture. We cannot think on the racks by which tyrant-man has tortured
his brother-man—on the dungeons in which he has imprisoned him, and shut
out from him the sun of heaven and the breath of nature, without a
feeling of repugnance and a sentiment of indignation, and yet Christians
can believe that God, whom they call “the good, the merciful,” has
constructed for his creatures means of undying anguish and dungeons of
boundless darkness, where the smile of hope never gleams, where the
light of mercy never comes. We lament war, and yet, if orthodox, we
believe that God maintains in his dominions regions of everlasting
warfare; we lament the madness and abuse of passion, and yet, if
orthodox, we must believe that God allows that madness and abuse to be
eternalized in all their extreme malignity. We lament physical and
mental suffering; except on the visitation of mercy none of us would
desire to go through the lazar house, where despair and anguish lie low
together, where the head is heavy and the pulse is fevered; or through
those asylums which give refuge to humanity in its last calamity, and
its worst; and yet, if orthodox, we can believe that God perpetuates
throughout everlasting ages the worst evils of the body, the fiercest
passions, and the most awful madness of the soul. And yet this great,
this glorious universe is his—is his workmanship—it came not up in a
night, it is not to perish in a night—the earth is long to be green, and
the heavens are to be bright. Throughout the space that has no limit,
throughout the time that has no end, the stars are to shine, and systems
are to move onward in their unmeasured and their trackless glory. And
yet, if orthodox, we must believe there is an endless hell whose smoke
of torment must ascend for ever against their brightness. These, the
works of God’s hands, are marred—the majesty of his power
defeated—Paradise is made a wilderness, and hell is made populous. If we
think of the world with any degree of realising truth, we shall feel
this result to be most tremendous, and we shall wonder that God with
infinite power should have created such a lovely universe to be defaced;
that he should have peopled it with such capacities for good, to be
exercised for ever only in the production of evil; that he should have
given them immense and eternal capacities only to be immense and eternal
capacities for misery. This, if true, is the greatest miracle and the
greatest mystery unquestionably in the divine government.

This subject committed to my charge I feel to be truly solemn and awful.
Next to the idea of a God, that of a future state is the most important.
The character we ascribe to God operates on our own, or is created by
it; and so our conceptions of the future life reacts on human conduct,
and human sentiments. We may see this painfully in the mistakes and
abuses with which harsh views of the future life have clouded the
Christian church, and poisoned the heart of Christendom. These gloomy
sentiments from many robbed religion of solace, and the breast of peace.
I have seen beings maddened and convulsed by visions of Calvinism. I
have heard them long for annihilation as a consummation most
desirable—not in the remorse of sin, but in the tortures of
superstition.—I have seen them look forward with pleasure to the
church-yard turf under which they were to rest for ever from their
troubles, and sleep in peace their “eternal sleep.” This sombre belief
has at once desolated and darkened earth. Faith it has turned to a
boundless fear; the dread of the future it makes the bitterness of the
present, and is equally the parent of stern self-infliction, or of
remorseless intolerance. It was this that in older days drove the
ascetic to the desert; that made nature and the face of his fellow
hateful to him; that filled his ferocious solitude with unearthly
terrors; that trained, instead of a saint, a theological savage: it was
this which aroused religious wars; which infused into these wars a
spirit of fury; that demonised humanity; that made a most merciful
nature a stranger to mercy: it was this which brought man in nearest
resemblance to that vile and wicked being whom his worst and blackest
passions had formed: it was this belief that tore out the heart of flesh
and put in its place the heart of stone—a heart which no appeal could
soften, and which no appeal could move. It was not until there was a
hell without hope, that there was a heart without mercy. I believe it to
be quite capable of proof, that no mere worldly wickedness has ever
cursed mankind with so many sufferings as the belief of this doctrine;
that has ever heaped on them so many cruelties, and made them agents of
cruelties in return. Why have wars for religion ever been the worst? The
reason is obvious: the soldiers of religion are not soldiers of flesh;
the soldiers of religion enter into no earthly service; they enlist
under the god of battles and of vengeance. It is against the hated, and
the vile, and the accursed, and the lost, they carry destruction; they
are but the executioners of the righteous decrees of God, and theirs are
the championship of piety, and the chivalry of heaven. When the weak
contend with the weak, mutual need begets mutual mercy: but when the
natural ferocity of passion assumes the authority of God, and clothes
itself with the armour of the skies, the gulf in which all charity is
buried, is broad and unfathomable as that which is commonly placed
between heaven and hell. This belief was one of the main causes of the
most horrible religious persecutions. It was not until the generous and
gentle sensibility of the religious nature was debased by coarse
picturings of physical tortures and of endless miseries, that the
sacerdotal arm became terrible as death, and the sacerdotal spirit was
drenched in wrath as dire and unrelenting as that which they fashioned
beyond the grave. Before priestly and popular imaginations God became an
awful punisher. They created in heaven a throne of inexorable judgment,
and from that throne the word of fate went forth which could but once be
spoken, and cut off hope for ever. They freed themselves from human
compunctions, and emulated the stern despotism which they preached or
believed. Fear is the parent of cruelty—and in religion, as in
character, the slavish spirit is ever the most unfeeling. The truth is,
that whether in idea or in act, familiarity with torture stupifies the
heart and indurates the senses. That frequent contemplation of pain
destroys sympathy, and that pain, when once it can be carelessly seen,
can be easily inflicted, are facts which observation has placed beyond
the need of argument, and experience beyond the reach of contradiction.

In this Lecture I propose two objects:—First, to state my views on moral
retribution, which in essentials I apprehend are those of Unitarians in
general: Secondly, to examine the arguments which are advanced in favour
of eternal torture, and to state my reasons for not believing them. I
shall try to the utmost of my power to condense what I have to say, but
I hope for your indulgence in return, if on a subject of such compass—on
which so many volumes have been written—there should be some omissions.
The end of this or any other lecture can never be to expound an
important topic in all its completeness, so much as to suggest and
excite inquiry concerning it.

I. I shall, in the first place, enter on the positive section of my
lecture; and on this point, I am sorry to say that the frequent
re-assertion of mistakes regarding our doctrines will put me to the
painful necessity of much repetition.

1.—I commence with a few remarks on the nature of sin. One essential
characteristic on which we have insisted—and we believe what we have
asserted—is, that sin is a deep spiritual injury. The source of it is in
the soul; it is the dark corruption of an evil heart. This I take to be
one of the greatest and profoundest revelations of Christ, one which
places him infinitely above all other moral teachers, and which makes
Christianity the highest scheme of moral duty. False religions and false
philosophies have been all at variance with this inward sense of duty.
They have contrived numberless inventions as substitutes for it, or
devised most ingenious means to nullify it. Priesthoods, with most
imposing authority and mystical influence, have offered all sorts of
spiritual panaceas to ease the wounded conscience. Ceremonies, with all
graceful gesture and solemn import, have presented their beauty to the
senses, and their spell to the fancies of superstition. Sacrifices
without number—from the turtle-dove to the hecatomb; from the scape-goat
driven to the desert, to the human being slaughtered to God; from the
blood of life swelling round a thousand altars of vengeance, to the
flowers and the fruits that were heaped upon the altars of mercy—all
these have been tried to make religion for the senses, to make religion
a flattery and delusion: but all were not sufficient; conscience is
stronger than rituals, and to that conscience, to that spirit of God in
the soul of man, Christ came; to that he was the Apostle and to that he
preached. Christ went at once into the soul; he pierced the veil of
sophistries and deceits by which men are ingenious to discover excuses
to cover their selfishness and their wrong doings; he went to the seat
of the evil, and struck at once to the root of bitterness. Others
baptized with water, cleansing merely the outside, but he baptized with
fire and the holy spirit, going to the innermost thoughts of the heart
and the veins;—others preached on the keeping of feast-days and
fast-days, but he taught of that God who is not the Lord of times or
seasons, but the God of life in every hour—the God of the whole universe
in every motion;—others called men to go to the temple, Christ called
them to go into their closets and commune with their hearts;—others told
them to wash their hands, Christ exhorted them rather to cleanse their
spirits;—others told them to fear men who could kill the body, Christ
warned them not to fear man who could only kill the body, but to fear
God who could kill the soul as well as the body. He was truly the
prophet of eternity—the preacher for eternity. He was truly the preacher
of the invisible, and the herald of it—he needed not that any should
testify of man, for he knew what was in man—he required no testimony,
for he had the knowledge of humanity in his own nature deep and true,
but guiltless—and he spake out of the fullness of his own full heart: it
was therefore that he spake as never man spake: it was therefore that
the common people heard him gladly—for his words had power to those
thoughts and affections which are native to bosoms of all men; it was
therefore that he spake with authority, and not as the scribes: for they
discoursed on the traditions of the fathers, but he appealed to the
inspirations of God—they spake of what had been written on tables of
stones, but he spoke of what had been written on the fleshy tables of
the heart. Others made sin to consist in resistance to the priest or to
the king—but Christ showed it to be an alienation of the soul from God,
the apostacy of the conscience from its own sense of duty. It is that
which is within, he taught, that defiles the man; a man may wash his
hands seven times a-day, but not once cleanse his heart; he may often
wash his hands, and yet never in innocency. He showed that sepulchres
might be beautified outside, and inside be only rottenness and
corruption.—His apostles learned of him this most profound, most divine
philosophy, and so they preached it to the world. To be carnally minded,
says Paul, is death; to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Whatsoever, says the same apostle, a man soweth, that shall he also
reap; he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption,
but he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the spirit reap everlasting
life. Lust, (or evil desire,) saith Saint James, when it hath conceived,
bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
This is the gospel doctrine on the inwardness and spirituality of sin;
and we preach no other gospel, and we teach no other doctrine. A solemn
consequence attaches to our view which is also powerfully enforced in
the New Testament scriptures, but which the vicarious scheme tends
directly to subvert—I mean the personal nature of transgression. Sin we
hold to be no transferable quality, and this was most lucidly proved
here by one of my brother lecturers. With the sinner himself lies the
guilt; with him who contracts it it must lie; it cannot be acquired by
imputation, nor can it be punished by imputation. If one doctrine be
more clearly taught in scripture than another, it is this, that the
offender shall be answerable only for his own sins; and for these, as
surely as there are a conscience, a future world, and a God, he must be
answerable.—Every man, our Saviour declares, shall be judged according
to his own works. Every one of us, the Apostle Paul asserts, shall give
an account of himself to God. But no, saith orthodoxy, you must also be
answerable for Adam, and upon your head must be a guilt that darkened
the very dawn of creation; and so upon this principle guilt should
descend from sire to son; the later we are in existence, the more
tremendous should be this growing mountain of imputation, until the last
man should sink under the burden of all the crime which had been from
the first man to himself.—We are told that Unitarians make light of sin.
But, I ask, what does orthodoxy make of justice? And I further ask, what
does it make of scripture? If there were a judge on earth who decided as
orthodoxy decides, he would be scouted as a monster: if there were a
code of laws which contained such a standard, the common moral sense of
mankind would reject it; nay, there is not a tribe of savages in the
habitable world so blind to the idea of justice as not to repel the
dogma of imputed and eternal punishment. And yet we are gravely told
that God thus acts, and that the Bible thus teaches; we are constantly
rebuked as wanting in faith and humility, because we can find no such
principles in either providence or the Bible. The plain declaration of
the prophet Ezekiel contains the spirit of both. “The soul that sinneth,
it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither
shall the father bear the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the
righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be
upon him.” As certainly as we have a moral sense, as surely as we can
discern between right and wrong, we are compelled to acknowledge the one
and utterly to repudiate the other. Give but the conscience justice, let
common sense have but the slightest voice in the decision, and you might
as easily attempt to gain a man’s assent to the broadest of
contradictions, even to the admission that a part is equal to the whole,
or that two and two are five, as to feel guilty for another man’s crime,
to feel remorse for another man’s wrong-doing, to be penitent or humble
for that in which we had no participation, or to confess the justice of
punishment by a sentence which made him criminal before his existence.
On the moral injuries of thus forcing men to contradict the first
dictates of their nature, of destroying the personality of virtue on the
one side by an imputed righteousness, and the personality of sin on the
other by an imputed guilt, I intend not here to enlarge: but one evil I
will just allude to; I mean the wrong it does to truth of sentiment.
Feelings in their real existence which are most excellent and most
beautiful, it distorts and falsifies. There are no virtues on earth that
bring men nearer to heaven than humility and repentance. To be humble
with a true humility is to be in the likeness of Christ; to be penitent
with a true repentance is to be an object of rejoicing even to the
angels of heaven: but when we hear it said that we are to be of lowly
mind on account of inherited corruption, and penitent for imputed sin;
when we try to force ourselves into emotions which are not native to the
soul, unconsciously we undermine its simplicity and sincerity, and
instead of virtues which must be of spontaneous growth, or not exist at
all, we have sickly abortions of sentiment that are false, because
unnatural; strained efforts that are at eternal war with experience; and
high-sounding phrases that are as empty as echo and as cold as the
frozen blast. Perversions like these are almost worse than vices, for
vices, though they mar the life, may leave the moral judgment its
integrity. Where there is true conviction there may be amendment, but
when the inward sense is itself diseased, the case is all but hopeless.
Whatever be the evil of sin, whatever be its punishment; whether the
evil be infinite or limited, whether the punishment be eternal or
temporal, let us at least beware of weakening that sentiment on which
all morality is founded, the deep sense of personal responsibility.
Unitarian views are often described as being unfavourable to
spirituality; but if by spirituality I am to understand the inward life
of man, the activity of his mental and moral energies, then I think
these views eminently spiritual. The spirit of man is their great
subject, and the spirit of God in the human, their great agency of
salvation. Within the soul itself they place moral salvation or moral
destruction, and within the soul itself they place the elements which
constitute one or the other, the sense of guilt which makes its hell,
the conscious holiness which makes its heaven. This inward power of
conscience is the true distinction of spiritual life; and the righteous
submission to it in our own hearts, we maintain, is the faith which
justifies: a faith which is an indwelling vitality which consists not in
forming propositions about God and Christ, and in enforcing them or
submitting to them, but in making God and Christ realities in our secret
thoughts; in confidence on the worth of goodness, in allegiance to duty,
and in trust in the power and immortality of truth.

2. Next I affirm that sin is evil, and that sin is punishable; and our
doctrines make not light of the evil, or disguise the awfulness of the
punishment. Sin is evil: we deny not that; how could we? It is an
eternal truth written on the heart and life of man, proved with
unequivocal and gloomy evidence in the whole history of the world. Sin
is evil to the individual; evil in the sufferings it prepares for him,
and a still greater evil when it hardens him beyond suffering. Each one
of us will judge this question for himself according to his degree of
moral sensibility, and according to the circumstances of his moral
history; but whatever be that sensibility, or whatever be that history,
our moments of most profound anguish have ever been those in which we
have felt the shameful consciousness of wrong thoughts or wrong actions.
Not, it is true, when the evil passions or evil deeds held their
tyrannical sway over us, but when the spell was gone, when the mind’s
eye grew clear, and the hour of reflection came with sorrow, and the sad
pale light spread over the hand-writing on the wall, from which
conscience might shrink but could not fail to read. The worst, the most
hardened, the most degraded of human creatures, those whom the world may
think have bidden farewell to conscience, have moments in the dark
silence of thought when the sword of remorse with all its poisoned
tortures sinks into their wounded bosoms. And in such hours, it is not
outward loss, or outward suffering, but inward agony that afflicts them
most; it is not that they have sunk into the dregs of poverty; it is not
that they have been reduced to dependence and exposed to insult; it is
not that pride passes them with cold and withering scorn; it is not that
pity and hope seem banished from their path; that all appear to frown
upon them; that externally for them there is no longer peace on earth or
light in heaven—it is, that the brightness and the freshness of their
own hearts are gone; that sacred affections are a waste; that
conscience, when not silenced into apathy, is enraged into an accuser;
that their own respect is lost beyond recovery, and no delusion, however
self-deceiving, can again restore it. The heart-consuming grief, the
wrath and tribulation treasured up in a life of sin, the righteous judge
of the earth alone can know. And these are all the more bitter if that
life had ever been blessed with holier associations. There is a courage
which can repel the scowl of others; there is a pride, a madness, if you
will, which can despise their opinions, or feel independent of their
esteem; there is a fortitude which can endure physical suffering to its
last infliction; but there is nothing in time, in place, or in
circumstance, which can fortify us against our own thoughts, against our
own feelings, and especially the feelings of the divinity within us,
that struggle to the last for empire over evil; that come ever and ever
to tell us of what we had of good or might have had; that haunt us with
reproach and sorrow when we have become traitors to our better nature.
Not to speak of conscience with its stinging sense of violated
conviction; not to speak of wasted time, ruined power, and a wreck of
hopes; to say nothing of alienation from God, and the fear of a future
world, I can conceive of memory dwelling on spots, which once were spots
of light, becoming the tormentor of a fallen soul, the vindicator of
duty and of God; I can conceive of one looking back from the bare
desolateness of sin to a youth that once had been pure, full of joy and
full of virtue, to homes that had been glad with every affection that
sweetens life, to sabbaths that had repose for the stainless spirit, and
prayer for unpolluted lips; gazing with breaking hearts and weeping eyes
over a part marked with vice and misery, that had been a future glorious
with promise; all this I can conceive in connection with even the felon
in his cell, or with some wretch whose cough, like a knell of despair,
awakens the midnight silence of the street, whose latest pang is spent
in some hidden retreat of filth and sorrow, of sin and loathsomeness.

I need not say that sin is a great social evil. The fact is urged upon
us with too painful a pressure, both from history and observation. Take
the history of governments and nations; wars and bloodshed stain the
record over its whole extent. And whence are these, but from the
struggle and rivalry of selfish and sinful passions? From whence, says
the apostle James, come wars and fightings among you; come they not
hence, even of your lusts? From these we have had the oppression of
strength against right. From these we have had the tyrannies and
cruelties with which they surrounded their thrones of iron despotism;
with which they made the glory of self the affliction of millions; with
which so far as their power extended, they have been the scourges and
the curses of mankind. From these we had the hatred one nation against
another, men arrayed against each other to hew each other down, doing
all iniquities, when interest or ambition called for them, enslaving one
another, and selling one another, unmindful of all the claims of
fraternity in the din of faction, and losing the sense of their common
humanity in the difference of clime or the colour of the skin. Take the
history of laws. I shall not allege those of the criminal code which
until very recently made even Christian and enlightened countries vast
arenas of legalised assassination: which spread a reign of terror over
the face of empires, making the scaffold and the gibbet their principal
symbols of civilization, and multiplying to enormous extent the very
crimes, which, pretending to punish, they only publicly authorized and
exemplified. I speak here more particularly of the spirit of partiality,
injustice, selfishness, and rapacity in which much of legislation has
been conceived and executed: classes of men turning the laws to their
own purposes and leaving those unprotected who most required protection;
commonly preying most on those who least could bear it. Except where the
general sentiment of human right has been too strong for narrow
passions, we may see in the long course of ages, principle sacrificed to
personal interests, the good of masses betrayed or despised, the poor
scorned, the ignorant neglected, the privileged orders hedged about with
all sorts of protection, the classification of crime and criminals most
unfairly adjusted, the distribution of penalties most unrighteously
allotted; this I ascribe to selfish and evil passions. Once more, take
the history of religion, and you have all the anger of faction made more
stern with the rivalry of Creeds; the ambition of earthly dominion more
aspiring by the addition of spiritual rule also; the powers of this
world made more fearful by the powers of the world to come; both the
visible and in visible existence subjected to priestly empire, and made
tributary to priestly aggrandizement; the sword of the civil magistrate
which had been sharp enough with one edge to deal the vengeance of man,
receiving another edge from ecclesiastical authority, to vindicate the
judgments of God. Thus we are compelled to read history, and thus in all
its departments we are compelled to witness the dark traces which sin
has left upon its pages. When we turn to the world around us, these
evils are not the less glaring. Many sufferings, no doubt, are to be
ascribed to our natural wants and weakness, but they scarcely deserve to
be called evils, when we compare them with those which spring from moral
derangements. Poverty is not so great an affliction as an all-devouring
love for gain; sickness is not so great a misfortune as an insatiate
desire for pleasure; and the ills of poverty and pain together, are not
as fatal as the irritable wish for distinction which rules so widely in
the world, with its fierce blood of turbulent passions. To these there
are to be ascribed the worst social miseries that grieve the best
hearts, and to remove or ameliorate which the finest spirits have ever
directed their labours. To these we are to ascribe the covetousness
which closes the hand of bounty, and shuts up the bowels of compassion;
which becomes insensible both to justice and mercy; to these we are to
ascribe all forms of sensuality, and all the abuses of passion; to these
we are to ascribe all vices, material or malignant: and who, though he
had the capacious mind of an archangel, can count the miseries which in
all shapes spread contagion through society? Independently of those
evils which no human eye can reach, those which present themselves on
the very surface of observation are sufficiently extensive and fearful;
intemperance, ignorance, grossness, hatred, strifes, with all their
gloomy appendages; of unhappy homes; of loud and laughing and blushless
infamy; of mad licentiousness, and late despair; of lost health, lost
honesty, lost reason, which respectively close their career in the
hospital, the prison, or the lunatic asylum.

3. As to evidence, then, for the existence of guilt, as to its extent
and its evil, I think I can go as far as any Calvinist. I see the fact,
and I have no wish to disguise it; it startles, but it does not subvert
my faith. I grant sin to be evil—evil in the inward spirit—evil on the
outward life—evil to the individual—evil to the species—evil in this
world—evil in the next. In a certain sense, I am not prepared to deny
that it leaves injurious consequences, which may be eternal; that the
loss of innocence, that subversion of moral tastes, may implant habits
which, for aught I know, shall be an everlasting injury to the soul, not
utterly to destroy its happiness, or stop its progression, but to
deprive it of advantages and advancement which a purer moral state would
have given it. The evils of sin I hold to be terrible; the penalty of
sin I hold to be inevitable—to be removed by no sacrifice, to be washed
out by no expiation—to be escaped only in the criminals rising out of
the corruption by experience and wisdom, to a purer moral state. The
punishment of sin I believe to be not only inevitable, but also
enduring, enduring in proportion to indulgence and malignity. Thoughts,
I admit, which have wrought themselves into the very texture of the
intellectual nature; feelings which have rooted themselves into the
heart; habits that have grown into instinct, are not speedily to be
destroyed. Moral punishment, in my idea, is identical with moral
discipline, and moral discipline I consider to be such an arrangement of
circumstances in the providence of God as shall lead us to
self-correction; such a process of spiritual training as leave us the
consciousness of our own liberty, but yet accomplish God’s wise ends by
God’s boundless power. In building, then, the structure of our
character, our Creator works not by miracle, but by experience, and this
experience may be slow and painful. I believe most sincerely and
profoundly in a future punishment; not vindictive, but corrective—for
all wise punishment is, and must be, corrective. That the dispensations
of God are not completed in this life, I think all the moral aspects of
things here below make most manifest, and all analogies intimate, if
Scripture had not expressly declared, that after death there is to be a
more distinct exhibition of the divine government. That the results of
character formed in the present life are to be carried into the future,
and to influence it, I conceive our whole nature argues. Our existence,
as spiritual beings, is properly connected and continuous; one state
prognosticates another; and no two are absolutely distinct and separate.
Our spiritual life consists of thought united to thought, and feeling to
feeling, one operating on the other, or producing it, of a mysterious
chain of consciousness, bound from link to link by successive memories,
preserving unbroken the identity of our existence. Manhood is the growth
of our youth, and immortality is the growth of our manhood; and the
impressions of character pass from one stage to another, along the line
of succession and sequence. There are no extremes, except to our outward
observation. Looking at one stage of life, and then, after a long
interval, seeing in the same person the apparently opposite
characteristics, we take those things to be antagonists which are bound
together by the inevitable connexion of cause and effect. The dreamer of
youth becomes, perhaps, the misanthropist of age; the prodigal of youth,
it may be, grows into the miser of age; the principle of action may in
each case be the same—vanity or self-love; the passion is identical in
principle, and changed only in form, from a change in circumstances. If
we should meet an honest rustic in his peaceful fields, innocent and
contented; if we should afterwards by accident behold him on a scaffold,
it would be to us a seeming and terrible incongruity. But why? The two
events are in our minds in naked contrast: could we, however, pierce the
Spirit and trace the life of that unfortunate—watch it from the first
intrusive evil thought successively dwelt on; from actions slightly
wrong, unceasingly reiterated and darkening with every repetition, until
the last deadly volition, and the last awful deed, we should have an
analysis of sad consistency and of profound interest. There is something
sublime in the reflection, that every human creature who treads the
earth and breathes the air, has an inward history, a history unread by
every eye but God’s; a history of solemn import, that has definite
impression on the concerns of the universe, and is to live for ever in
the annals of eternity.

In ordinary phraseology, we speak of our existence as if death made a
chasm in it; but temporal and eternal are but distinctions of
imagination; our eternal life commences, and our earthly is but the
first stage, the infancy of that awful and endless existence. If I see
in our nature that which can survive change, I see that also in it which
can take materials of joy and sorrow along with it. The faculties that
make our life here must be those which shall make that which is to come.
Memory then will be there, which is but the resurrection of our by-gone
experience; and whether for good or evil, it will call up the spirits of
buried deeds, and as the life has been, will be an angel of heaven or a
minister of hell;—imagination, which may have been the nurse of piety or
the slave of passion,—intellect, which may have had the glow of the
seraph or the malice of the demon: accordingly, then, as these powers
have been properly directed or abused, every instinct of our moral
nature tells us must be the joy of a righteous soul, or the agony of an
evil heart. What treasure will the good man find he has laid up for his
immortal life, when the past arises to him in the lustre of a new world:
the consciousness of good thoughts and good actions, the peace of
assimilation with God, and of union with the best of men: the immortal
love of those with whom he had companioned in his earthly journey, the
gratitude of many from whose eyes he had banished tears, and from whose
bosoms he had plucked out despair; who has been true to the claims of
his nature, and accomplished the work of a disciple of Christ, and a
child of God, and a brother of man. On the other side, what are to be
his feelings, who awakens in eternity with emotions of isolation and
repulsion, condemned in his own conscience, who now discovers he has all
to learn which can fit him for the society of noble spirits, whose
expanded faculties flash shame and sorrow on his guilty soul, and show
him that his whole course was folly: the sensualist, who stultified his
reason and profaned his affections: the hypocrite, that toiled but for
the outward, betrayed his convictions, and was a living and incarnate
lie; before his fellows, a whited sepulchre; before his God, a corrupted
mass of falsehood: the profane man, on whose lips prayer rarely dwelt,
but to whom cursing and bitterness were familiar: the persecutor, who
finds at last that he has hated or tormented others for a falsehood, or
a sound: the man of wild ambition, who, despising the true glory which
comes from God, and consists in doing right, spreads terror around him,
in pursuing a phantom: the worldling, whose spirit was enslaved to those
treasures for which he wasted life, and which he has left behind him in
the dust. The sense of right and wrong is powerful and eternal; and when
bad men resist it, it may be safely trusted to effect its own work, both
of correction and of punishment.

II. I shall here review some of the arguments pleaded for the eternal
misery of the wicked, and state briefly the grounds on which I reject
it.

When we consider the mild and merciful spirit of the Gospel,—when we
reflect on it as a revelation of divine love made manifest in the most
perfect form of human love,—we are at first sight astonished that so
tremendous an idea as that of an infinite and eternal hell could ever
have been connected with it, or so wretched a one as a seclusive, and
comparatively all but an unpeopled heaven. And truly this could have
never been, had the doctrine of immortal life been apprehended in the
full spirit of Christianity. But the fact of man’s immortality made
manifest in the Gospel has not generally been so apprehended, it has had
from the first to contend against darkening and perverting influences.
Converts to the faith of Christ brought with them many of the prejudices
and errors of their former training, and what in the early ages of the
church was the result of ignorance, in later ones became sanctified into
the testimony of faith. Those who came from heathen superstitions to the
religion of Christ, brought with them minds filled with material images;
their worship or their age left no means for any others; and their
belief in a future existence of necessity became shaped by these
associations. A sacrificial worship symbolized their gods of wrath, and
what they had attributed to many, they were unable to dissociate from
one; physical pains and pleasures comprehended their whole notion of
retribution and reward, and these their Christianity made eternal. Their
hell and their heaven were therefore fashioned from the rude conceptions
of their previous superstitions, and from the symbolic language of the
Gospel crudely understood. The everlasting hell which thence grew out of
the mistakes of the vulgar, and the speculations of the learned, it was
too much the interest of priests to maintain, not to receive the
sanction of the church with an earnest and zealous promulgation.
Connected with other doctrines, what immense power was thus placed in
the hands of ecclesiastics! With what deep and gloomy awe it shrouded
the character of the priest! Once in the place of his ministry, he stood
there not as the simple teacher of his brethren, and his equals, not as
the mere expounder of his master’s gospel, but as the commisioned
delegate of heaven, authorized by God to denounce his everlasting wrath
on the guilty, to wield the thunder of an eternal vengeance. We cannot
estimate the power with which such a doctrine would invest the
hierarchy, and we are not therefore surprised that it is the last which
any orthodox priesthood would be willing to resign,—one of those prime
doctrines, to deny which has ever been stamped as heresy, from Origen to
Servetus. If even in these times, when protestantism and other causes
have done so much to take away the reverence with which the ministry was
once surrounded, highly-wrought pictures of endless misery give men not
deemed to have any supernatural authority such influence over the minds
of their hearers, such despotism over their feelings and their
consciences, what must it have been when superstition bent down the
votaries before the church in prostrate submission, when the servants of
her altar were regarded as the direct messengers of God,—as those
ordained to stand between hell and heaven, with the key of both; to
announce glad tidings, or empty the vials of indignation; to distribute
God’s grace, or to proclaim his malediction. Many causes have been
assigned for the growth of ecclesiastical supremacy, but this doctrine I
am persuaded was the greatest of all; the priestly throne, which raised
its ambition to the stars, was girded around by the lightning and
tempests of eternal terrors. The doctrine of eternal torments derives
much strength from ecclesiastical interest; and it is further sustained
by all the logic of theological subtlety. Many writers on divinity seem
to find a strange and morbid pleasure in describing the tortures of the
wicked, both in nature and duration, exhausting all analogies to
illustrate the incomprehensible; and all modes of thought and expression
to explain the infinite. On this doctrine the transition from Romanism
to Protestantism has impressed no change. If the Reformation broke some
bonds that enslaved the freedom of religion, it removed no cloud which
obscured its heaven: the fierce teachings of Augustine were only made
more complete and systematic by the still fiercer doctrines of Calvin;
and the dark sketch of eternal reprobation drawn in its outlines by the
Carthaginian monk, received its last touches from the Genevan master:
what in the olden church was broached only in the cautious reasonings of
the schools, has in Protestantism been made the staple _materiel_ of
theological declamation.

These doctrines have not only done much to obscure men’s minds as to the
condition of the wicked in a future state, but also to mislead them in
an equal degree on that of the righteous. This we observe in many of the
popular notions of heaven. To millions, heaven seems to be for the soul
what the grave is for the body—a place of mere repose. If something more
than this, an elysium for indolence, a kind of region of complacent
idealism, where the faithful and elect are to enjoy ecstacies and
prayer, musings and melodies, which the coarse struggles of earth
forbade, in which the cares of the world left no time to engage;—the
clear skies and still waters of paradise, the golden harps, the incense,
and the music of angels, to relieve from weariness, strife, and pain,
toil-worn and time-worn spirits. Nor is such view of heaven ungrateful,
tried as we are here with sin and tired as we are with labour; but this
must not exhaust our thoughts of future bliss. Our highest happiness,
even in heaven, must consist in highest action: no other happiness can
exist for a moral and intellectual being than that which calls his
faculties into energy, and supplies both with materials and objects on
which to engage them. Our ideas in general of heaven are too much those
of negation or contrast. We are here in sojourn, we think only of home
there; we are here in conflict, we think only of peace there; we are
here in labour, and there we only picture our rest; we forget that all
these are worth nothing but as means to higher purposes, unsuitable as
final conditions to creatures who bear within them the life that is
henceforth to go on with that of the All-creative God.

I may just observe here, and it is pleasant to be able to do so, that
the opinion against which this Lecture is directed, is an illustration
of the fact that tenets die out practically before they are renounced
theoretically. It is well known to all who hear recent orthodox
preaching, or who read recent orthodox works on practical piety, how
little compared with former times is the space now occupied in them by
Satan and damnation. The imagination is not tortured as it once was,
with all horrible and hideous representations of human suffering, which
taste and devotion alike reject. Why, even in the Lecture of my reverend
and respected opponent, though directly on the subject, all the
repulsive features are lost in a most moderate and temporate exposition.
Such errors let alone will gradually of themselves expire.

1. In support of the doctrine of eternal torments, it is in the first
place pleaded that Scripture expressly declares it. This conclusion is
founded principally on the words and phrases correspondent to our
“ever,” “everlasting” “for ever and ever,” &c. That in numerous passages
they imply duration without end or limit, we readily admit. It is
needless to point them out. We are then told that this must be their
invariable meaning, except some evident fragility in the object to which
they are applied implies the contrary. To assert that they have the
highest force when connected with future punishment, is to assume what
is to be proved; for the nature of the object is the very question in
dispute. If we can show that the words have not unvarying literal
application, then the subject is at least open to discussion; but if it
be asserted they must mean endless duration, because future punishment
is in its _nature_ endless, the point is dogmatically decided, and there
is no further possibility of argument. If every phrase of Scripture is
to be taken as a rigid definition, then we are to believe that Christ
held himself in his own hands when he said, “this is my body.” Now the
instances in the Bible, in all parts of it in which phrases disputed
between us and our opponents indicated limited duration, and only that,
are numerous beyond counting:[601]—sometimes, not longer than a man’s
life, as when after certain conditions of compact, the slave is said to
serve his master for ever. In other cases it is more extended, but still
temporary; as when the land of Judea is called an everlasting
possession; the law an everlasting covenant; the nation a people
established for ever; the hierarchy an everlasting priesthood. As to the
last, the writer to the Hebrews tells us, that “the priesthood being
changed there is made a necessity of change also of the law; for there
is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the
weakness and unprofitableness of it.”

Αιων (the principal word in the Greek original), Mr. Simpson in his
Essay on the duration of future rewards and punishments (p. 17) asserts,
occurs about a hundred times in the New Testament, in seventy of which
at least it is clearly used for limited duration. In the Septuagint
translation of the Old Testament it is even repeated, and several times
it is repeated twice, and in two instances signifies no longer a period
than the life of one man only. “It is,” says the same critic, “an
observation of the utmost importance, that when αιων, or αιωνιος, are
applied to the future punishment of the wicked, they are never joined to
life, immortality, incorruptibility, but are always connected with fire,
or with that punishment, pain, or second death, which is effected by
means of fire. Now since fire, which consumes or decomposes other
perishable bodies, is itself of a dissoluble or perishable nature, this
intimates a limitation of the period of time.” The phrase, “everlasting
fire,” is plainly a metaphor, a metaphor which the Jews would be at no
loss to understand: the associations which they derived from the fire in
the valley of Hinnom would render it sufficiently intelligible.

The phraseology was familiar in the Old Testament. Fire unquenchable,
fire not to be quenched, is used in many places in which it cannot be
literal. Thus Jeremiah (xvii. 27.) threatens the Jews, in the name of
God, for their breach of the sabbath, “then will I kindle a fire in the
gates (of Jerusalem,) and it shall devour the palaces thereof, and it
shall not be quenched.” So Isaiah (xxxiv. 9, &c.), speaking of Idumea,
“and the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust
thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch.
It shall not be quenched night nor day: the smoke thereof shall go up
for ever.”—While on this part of the subject, I shall just allude to a
remark made on Mr. Grundy’s view of the text in which it is said of the
wicked that their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched. After
quoting a passage from Mr. Grundy’s Discourse, and making some comment
on it, the lecturer went on to assert, “In a note moreover, we are
informed that the foregoing criticism is founded on the assumption of
the passage really referring to future punishment, which, however, the
preacher affirms it does not. For, he adds, we have before shown, the
worm has been long since dead, and for ages has the fire been quenched.”
The impression which this use of Mr. Grundy’s language had a tendency to
leave, is one wholly foreign to his meaning; for it would seem to imply
that Mr. Grundy asserted the extension already of retributive penalty in
the future life. The plain import is, that our Lord used a metaphor
taken from perishable things, which have, in fact, perished—and thence
it cannot be proved that he referred to an eternal state of suffering.
The allusion, as is well known, is taken from the close of Isaiah,
where, of the worshippers going to Jerusalem, it is said, they shall
look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed, for their worm
shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched. It is plain that
here it means not eternity, and though applied by Christ to future
punishment, it does not follow from the language that he means to imply
unending punishment. Archbishop Newcome’s language is as strong as Mr.
Grundy’s; for he also says, “in the valley of Hinnom, the worm died when
its food failed—and the pile on which human sacrifices were burnt to
Moloch was often extinguished.” To the writer of the lectures which have
been referred to, we are all deeply indebted for an example set us in
times and under circumstances of which we can but little now estimate
the difficulty; we owe him the tribute of our respect for an honest and
fearless advocacy of truth, of mental and religious freedom, at the
expense of painful and personal sacrifices.

Thus, while none of these passages that I have referred to prove this
doctrine, there are many scriptures at utter variance with it. God is
again and again called the father that created us. We are taught that he
is good, and that his tender mercies are over all his works. God is
love. He will not always chide, we are told, neither will he keep his
anger for ever; that he will not cast off for ever; that he hath not
shut up his tender mercies in anger. Finally, almost in the close of the
sacred volume, we are informed that there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, neither crying, neither shall they suffer any more pain;
for the former things are passed away. Both these cannot be true. It is
a moral contradiction to conceive a gracious and merciful God, creating
beings with immortal life, and then rendering them eternally wretched:
we have but one alternative, either we must renounce our faith in these
declarations, or we renounce it in the benevolence of God. There are but
two texts, one in Daniel, and the other in Matthew, in which there is
any remarkable force. In these it is said that the wicked go away into
everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal, and on
these two phrases the tremendous doctrine is built up. The duration of
both are urged to be equal, and we are told, that if we deny eternal
damnation, we deny eternal life. No such thing. Reason, feeling, nature,
justice, moral sentiment, the belief of a perfect God, and the force of
scriptural evidence, coincide with the one and are repugnant to the
other. There is not a single proof which can be urged in favour of a
future life, which is not an irrefutable argument against future
perdition. If you deduce the ideas from the goodness of God, from his
truth, from his wisdom, it is essentially subversive of this dark dogma.
If you deduce the idea from the nature of man, it comes to the same
purpose; if you conclude he is to live for ever, because of his infinite
and progressive faculties of reason and of conscience, you must by the
same argument infer that he is to live to a better end than to be cast
eternally into hell. If he was worth creation, he is worth preserving;
if he is worth preserving, he is worth being made good and happy. If a
great multitude of immortals are to endure infinite pain, so far as they
are concerned, the existence of a soul and the being of a God are
infinite evils.

The spirit and the letter of Scripture is in favour of this glorious
doctrine. Every Scripture which proves that God is good and not
malignant is in favour of it; every Scripture which proves that God is a
restorer and not a destroyer is in favour of it; every Scripture which
proves that God has more the desire to pardon than to punish proves it.
To this effect I might quote passages to greater extent than the whole
of this lecture occupies; the selection must therefore be limited, not
by the want of matter but by the want of space. “God is love: and he so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life: for God
sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world
through him might be saved.”[602] “Jehovah is full of compassion, slow
to anger and of great mercy. Jehovah is good to all: and his tender
mercies are over all his works. All thy works do praise thee, O Jehovah:
and thy saints shall bless thee.” We are exhorted to “taste and see that
the Lord is good.” “The goodness of God,” we are told, “endureth
continually.” “The Lord God,” we are assured, “is merciful and gracious,
long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.” “The Lord your
God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you
if ye turn to him.” “The Lord is merciful and gracious; slow to anger
and plenteous in mercy: he hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor
rewarded us according to our iniquities: for as the heaven is high above
the earth, so great is his mercy towards them that fear him; as far as
the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions
from us: Like as a father pitieth his children, so hath the Lord
compassion on them that fear him: for he knoweth our frame; he
remembereth that we are dust.” And from our earliest prayer to our dying
hour, we are taught in the simplest and sublimest of all supplications
to open our address to God thus; “Our Father who art in heaven.” We read
evermore in Scripture that God’s is not an everlasting anger; as such
passages as the following testify: “His anger endureth but for a
moment.” “He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger for
ever.” “Hath God forgotten to be gracious; hath he in anger shut up his
tender mercies?” “I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always
wrath: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have
made.” Correspondent with the doctrine of these expressions, and with
the spirit of the whole Gospel, is a passage that I quote from a book
which Protestants in general declare not to be canonical. “Thou hast
mercy upon all; for thou canst do all things, and winkest at the sins of
men, because they should amend. For thou lovest all things that are, and
abhorrest nothing which thou hast made: for never wouldst thou have made
any thing if thou hadst hated it. And how could any thing have endured,
if it had not been thy will; or been preserved, if not called by thee?
But thou sparest thine, for they are thine, O Lord, thou lover of souls.
For thine incorruptible spirit is in all things; therefore chastenest
thou them, by little and little, that offend, and warnest them by
putting them in remembrance wherein they have offended, that leaving
their wickedness, they may believe on thee, O Lord. For thy power is the
beginning of righteousness; and because thou art the Lord of all, it
maketh Thee to be gracious unto all. But thou, O God, art gracious and
true: long suffering, and in mercy ordering all things: for if we sin,
we are thine, knowing thy power; but we will not sin, knowing that we
are accounted thine.”[603]

Once more, whatever theoretical view we may happen to hold on the
redemption of man by Christ, the end and glory of that redemption
requires as the only consistent consummation, the ultimate happiness and
virtue of mankind. To this purport I shall adduce one passage of
Scripture and quote a commentary. The passage is Rom. v. 12-21, and the
commentary is by Dr. S. Smith. “As by one man sin entered into the
world, and death by sin; and thus death hath passed upon all men,
inasmuch as all have sinned: (for until the law sin was in the world,
but sin is not imputed, where there is no law:) nevertheless death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those that had not sinned after
the similitude of Adam’s transgressions, who is a figure (a type) of him
that was to come: (yet the free gift likewise is not so, as was the
offence: for if through the offence of one, many have died, much more
the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus
Christ, hath abounded unto many. Neither is the gift so, as it was by
one that sinned; for judgment was of one offence to condemnation, but
the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if, by the
offence of one, death reigned by one, much more those who receive the
abounding of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life
by one, even Jesus Christ:) so then as by the offence of one, judgment
came upon all men to condemnation; so likewise by the righteousness of
one the free gift hath come upon all men to justification of life. For
as by the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so likewise, by
the obedience of one, many shall be made righteous. Moreover, the law
entered that sin might abound: but where sin abounded, grace did much
more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace
reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ, our
Lord.”

“In this passage all men are said to have been made mortal by the
offence of Adam, and here the phrase ‘all men’ must necessarily be
understood to signify every individual of the human race. Though the
style of the apostle in this passage is remarkably intricate and
perplexed, yet his meaning is clear, and scarcely to be misunderstood.
He affirms that death entered into the world by Adam, and that in
consequence of his offence, death passed upon all men, or all men became
mortal. Thus many were made sinful or mortal by one. In this sense Adam
was a type of Jesus Christ: for as all mankind became subject to great
privation or suffering in consequence of the offence of one, namely
Adam, so the greatest privileges and blessings are bestowed on all
mankind in consequence of the obedience of one, namely, Jesus Christ.
But it is only in this single circumstance that all suffer and all are
benefited by one, that there is any analogy between them: for in every
other respect there is the greatest possible difference between Adam and
Christ. The act entailing such important consequences upon the whole
human race, was, on the part of Adam, an act of transgression, on the
part of Christ an act of obedience. And there is a still further
disparity between them; for the calamities resulting from the act of
transgression were the legal punishment of the offence; but the
blessings accruing from the act of obedience were not such as could be
claimed by law, but were the free, unpurchased unmerited gift of God.
And the consequences of the act of transgression and the act of
obedience may be placed in still more striking contrast: for the act of
transgression was but one, and yet death, with all the calamities
connected with it, passed upon the whole human race; while the act of
obedience provides justification for many offences: nor is this all; for
the blessings procured for all mankind by the obedience of Christ are
unspeakably greater than the calamities brought upon them by the offence
of Adam.”

“This is undoubtedly the argument of the Apostle. Notwithstanding all
the obscurity and perplexity of his language, whoever reads the passage
with attention, must perceive these were the ideas which were in his
mind. And in the whole compass of Christian truth, there is no doctrine
more important or more glorious than that which is thus disclosed. It is
a direct and positive declaration, that the blessings, provided by the
obedience of Christ, shall, in number of persons who partake them, be
co-extensive with the calamities produced by the offence of Adam, and in
their magnitude and value greatly exceed them. This is sufficient; this
is decisive; these ideas were in the mind of the apostle; this is the
doctrine which he plainly and indisputably teaches, and nothing more is
necessary. For, even though it should be proved that he illustrates his
doctrine by a fanciful allusion to what was itself only an allegory;
that his reasoning is not in every respect complete, and even, that he
did not himself fully comprehend all the glorious consequences of the
sublime truth he disclosed, that truth would be neither the less
important nor the less certain. The great fact itself, the fact which it
was his object and his office to teach, and in which he could not be
mistaken, was, that the blessings produced by the obedience of Christ
shall be as extensive as the evils occasioned by the offence of Adam;
that all who suffer from the one shall partake of the benefits of the
other, while these benefits themselves shall infinitely exceed and
overbalance the calamities entailed on mankind by the first
transgression. The conclusion is inevitable, that the whole human race
shall ultimately be restored to virtue and happiness. By one passage of
Scripture then, at least, the doctrine which it is the object of this
work to establish, is positively and expressly affirmed; and this is
decisive.”[604]

To sustain this doctrine we hear analogy also pleaded. Pain, it is said,
has no tendency to correct. This is not true. Pain often does
correct—and many are led back to virtue by means of a sad experience.
Pain physically and morally is the great instrument of warning. But
though it were fully granted that pure pain were not a corrective
agency, it may, in connection with other influences, bring healing to
the soul. We never see it unmixed in this world, and we have no just
ground to conclude it will be so in another. How often is it the means
of drawing forth a mercy and a grace from others that softens the stony
heart of the transgressor. How often, when the sinner is laid low—yea,
and by the very effect of crimes, will a kind look or word, an instance
of forbearance or forgiveness, work a regeneration on his nature. How
often will the son who plagued his parents’ life, and whitened their
hair with sorrow, when driven by misery to seek again the shelter of a
home, be sweetened into meekness by a mother’s love, and be raised again
to dignity by a father’s generosity. If pain then, by making us feel the
goodness of others, will so frequently incite us to deserve it, are we
to conceive that an experience, with clearer knowledge of God’s love,
shall be entirely ineffectual? It is said, that men grow more hardened
in sin the longer they continue in it. I allow it was a generous truth:
and yet the thought of a moment—the visit of one pure memory, may
suffice to change a life of crime. But our argument is, that men will
not continue in sin; and it will not be asserted, that if reformation is
at all possible, God will refuse the means, and make crime eternal. It
is further stated that the wicked, by force of numbers and society with
each other, grow increasingly worse: it is to be proved, which it is not
and cannot, that in a future existence there is any such distribution
either local or moral. This doctrine is not only unfounded in analogy,
but contradicted by it—there must be either destruction or renovation:
so it is in the natural world, and so it is in the moral. Nothing can
sustain continued existence in a state of extreme disorganization; a
certain amount of consistency and harmony is an essential condition of
every being—without this, there must be dissolution and destruction. Sin
being then confusion in the soul and in society, an eternal state of
progressive sin is inconceivable. Pain, being in like manner
disorganization in body or mind, an eternity of growing pain is equally
inconceivable. Continued and extreme pain therefore must either destroy
its subject or destroy itself; and then on this argument alone we
perceive that eternal torture is a theological figment; a nonentity and
impossibility.

The belief is further pressed upon us on grounds of moral influence.
This is but an additional argument against it, for it either has no
effect or a bad one. It has no effect, from its vagueness and its
incomprehensibleness. It does not fasten on the moral feelings—it sinks
dead by its own ponderousness. It has no effect from its inconsistency
with human nature; there is no affinity between a finite being and
boundless torture; and thence from the want of truth there is also a
want of power. It has no effect, because there is an instinctive
abhorrence in the heart against it; and there is an instinctive justice
which repels it; the imagination reels before it—the mind retreats from
it, and finds that it is too odious even to be looked at. That it has no
effect may be seen to a vast extent: millions in all countries profess
to believe it, and among these have been, and are, many of the most
abandoned that ever brought shame upon their nature; and yet a faith in
hell gave them no fear of vice. So far as it has influence it is of a
bad kind; because it familiarizes the mind with coarse images; because
it breathes into obedience a spirit of slavish fear; because it makes
terror an instrument of religion; because it throws darkness on the ways
of providence; because it undermines filial confidence in God, and puts
a limit either to his power or his love. The doctrine of ultimate and
universal salvation lowers the sanctions of righteousness. But what is
the true motive to goodness, what is the spirit of it—that which unites
us most to God? Love, not fear; not fear of hell; and in the sense of
terror not even fear of God himself. Fear is mere submission to force,
not the willing service of heart-felt appreciation; the crouching of a
slave in outward show to the despot whom in his soul he thoroughly
detests. Now as we cannot love by constraint, what ideas of God are most
likely to move our affections, and consequently produce in us the true
spirit of obedience? Evidently his benevolence, his purity, his
disinterested goodness, his fatherly nature—to be drawn to him with the
cords of our hearts, we see him in the clear light of his moral beauty.
It is rather paradoxical that these doctrines on the power of fear, the
righteousness of vindictive punishment, and the limits of moral
reformation, should be propagated in our times, when all the practical
tendencies of society are in contradiction. The influence of conviction
and not of force, the influence of mind and not pain, is the growing
spirit of the time, and a faith, which puts no bound to hope; for the
love of man is a motive deepening ever in the great social heart. This
is the blessing of our day,—it has enlightened education, and softened
the rigour of instruction; it is mingling the gentleness of mercy with
the austerity of punishment; it is working to restore the criminal and
not to destroy, tempering discipline with wisdom, believing that
corrective amelioration is most useful and most just; in the same
believing spirit it is sending a vast spiritual agency into every realm
of vice: while thus philosophy and philanthropy labour in the trust they
shall leave men better than they found them, exploding the errors which
had been the greatest curses to mankind, these are the very errors which
theology sanctifies, which it is heresy to deny: whilst a moral and
merciful civilization is exerted to exalt man, theology continues to
deface the image of God; the one scattering beauty on mortality, and the
other spreading darkness on eternity; the one removing pain, and the
other preaching it.

The doctrine we oppose is further defended on the ground that sin is an
infinite offence, that man is therefore an infinite offender; and that
an infinite offender deserves unending punishment. The assertion, that
man can be an infinite offender, is wholly inconsistent with the views
which the orthodox themselves present of man. To be a transgressor in
any degree, implies the possession of a noble nature, much less to be an
infinite transgressor; but with the miserable and contemptible creature
which Calvinism describes as man, it is impossible to associate any idea
that is either noble or infinite, for good or for evil. We may assume
another mode of reasoning. The obedience of the law is righteousness,
the transgression of the law is sin. These are correspondent
definitions. By every rule, therefore, of logical deduction, if a single
act of sin is an infinite evil, a single act of obedience is an infinite
good; and on the same grounds of justice by which one man is doomed to
an everlasting hell, the other merits an eternal heaven.

But to speak of man at all as an infinite offender, is to set common
sense at defiance. Whence can be the infinitude of his offence? Not in
its origin, not in its effects, not in its duration: not in its origin,
for it is produced in limited faculties; not in its effects, for the
errors of a created nature, counteracted by an uncreated omnipotence,
can never be infinite, can never be irremediable; not in its duration,
for the life of one man, the lives of all men to the end of human
generations, are but a point in the universe and government of God. Sin
is either a state of mind or a state of action; but whether as one or
the other, it must of necessity be limited. Were the career of man
extended to that of Methusalem, and his powers as capacious as his years
were many; were the whole of that existence a succession of crime,
uncheered by a solitary virtue; were the energy of the mightiest
intellect devoted to contrive guilt, and the efforts of the most
ingenious sinfulness given to its execution; were every creation of
fancy a vision of impurity, every instinct an impulse to cruelty, every
emotion a movement of malignity, yet even thus horrible, we could not
with truth call man an infinite offender. Neither in desire nor in
action can he be such. Not in desire, for there is no man that wishes,
there never has been the man that wished, absolute, unmingled, endless
evil; not in action, for there is no man, whatever the malignity of his
intention, has unlimited power of execution. If sin is an infinite
offence, then all sins are equal, for infinity has no degrees; if
sinners are infinite transgressors, then criminals have no distinctions;
transgression has no gradations, and the whole moral space is
annihilated between him who stands on the very margin of heaven, and him
who is already plunged into hell; the same impassable gulf which exists
between their conditions, exists also between their characters.

Man is not an infinite offender, nor yet is he an incorrigible one.
There is nothing in his nature or history which justifies the
conclusion. There is no point of moral baseness so low that we can mark
it as a hopeless condition. He is not immutable; and as change is
possible, changes for the better may be looked for, as well as changes
for the worse. Such changes have been; the painful experience of evil
and wrong-doing, however slow and vacillating, always drives towards
them; all observation, therefore, is in favour of our expectation. We
look not on the deepest, the deadliest, and the worst instance of human
depravity, as beyond correction, beyond improvement, beyond the power of
Almighty God; we look upon no ignorance that may not be enlightened;
upon no vice that may not be removed; upon no human countenance so
scarred with the traces of depravity, as to leave nothing visible but
the hand-writing of reprobation; God forbid that we should behold any
human being with humanity’s capacities, destined, beyond amendment, to
hopeless corruption and to incorrigible misery. I deny not the existence
and the delusion of vice. I deny not the abuse of the noblest faculties,
or the perversion of the best affections, but I do deny that the human
soul is ever so wrecked or lost as to become utterly hopeless. The man
of pleasure may turn from joy to joy, and collect nothing for his home
but weariness and disgust; the man of ambition may sacrifice health and
repose, honour and probity; the covetous man may, during a long life,
drudge away days of labour, and toss through nights of care, to die in
the possession of what he never enjoyed; the indolent and the prodigal
may live as if there were no _tomorrow_; the vicious and profane may
reel on, reckless of a future existence and a future judgment. We have
all seen every human passion making havoc upon virtue; but we have also
seen the passions, carrying with them their own sting and their own
punishment, and in that sting and punishment, to a certain extent at
least, they have contained their own amelioration and amendment. That
human beings have been raised from their lowest debasement, that they
have been emancipated from the worst of moral bondage, that they have
been purified from the deepest of pollutions, we have many consolatory
evidences. In every nation of earth that now enjoys the blessings of
religion, of liberty, of arts, of moral and social refinement, we have
proofs, that by gradual and progressive improvement, these human beings
may be delivered from the very worst estate of ignorance, vice,
destitution, and brutality. For what are the nations that we now glory
to acknowledge, but instances the most undeniable, that man is not only
an imperishable, but also an improvable creature? I have seen beings in
their thoughtlessness, the victims of their own vanity, sink miserable
and despairing into the terror which they had prepared for themselves:
but must I say, that they shall never throughout eternity discover the
littleness of the objects they desired, nor abstain from chasing the
phantoms that misled them? I have seen men insanely and foolishly toil
for all that makes life a trifle, at the loss of all that makes it a
glory; I have read in history, and I can recal by memory, the experience
of those who spent all they had of energy or misused all they had of
goodness to obtain that which at last they felt their torture; I have
seen the turbulent nature soften into peace, the thoughtless awakened
into wisdom and action, the profane elevated into reverence, the impious
bending to pray, the angry subdued into meekness, the proud converted to
the wisdom of humility, the hard-hearted melted to the goodness of
mercy.

Should it be said that this argument is too narrow, and appeals only to
immediate feeling, let us then take a wider sphere, and try the
principle by a larger test. Call to your attention the varieties of
mankind, of their present and past condition, of their present and past
circumstances. Many millions exist on the wide surface of the globe,
among whom the elements of moral redemption have never had operation, on
whose benighted souls a ray of Christian light has never dawned, hearts
which have never felt the bliss of holy liberty, and bosoms that have
never burned with heavenly fire. Take up a map of the world; cast your
eye over its boundaries and divisions, from pole to pole, and from
meridian to meridian; conceive the myriads of rational beings who swarm
along that surface; reflect on the wonderful diversities in their
conditions and their training; pass over the dreary frosts of one
country, and the deadening heat of others; wherever you turn, humanity
meets you under different forms, and in various circumstances—with
habits more or less corrupted, with morals more or less pure, with
religion more or less enlightened or absurd; let me then ask any
enlightened thinker, any one who has studied human nature, whether all
these are to be arranged under one general classification. Consider the
tribes around the arctic, buried in darkness; pierce into the unexplored
regions of Africa; go over the deserts of Arabia; walk among the tents
of its predatory and pastoral populations; traverse Persia, India,
Tartary, the islands that dimly gleam through the Southern Ocean, and
wherever you go, mankind are in various moral positions, and
consequently under various terms of moral probation. Shall then that
all-seeing Creator, to whom every heart is open, place all these motley
tribes under one system of judgment? It cannot be. Shall beings born in
regions of darkness be condemned for want of light—beings who had never
breathed but of impurity, for not being sanctified—beings bred amidst
idols, for being idolatrous? Taking thus into view the populations of
the earth, we have before us an infinity of moral conditions; and yet
the differences are not greater between the extremes of them than those
we might select in a single country or a single city; than those, in
fact, which we know to exist. Respecting the terms of probation, a New
Zealander is not at a greater distance from an Englishman, than some
Englishmen are from others. When we think then how many are ignorant and
suffering by the very necessity of destiny, and by the same fate vicious
and depraved, if the passage of a breath end all hope of amendment, our
faith must cease in divine justice, as well as divine wisdom, and our
perplexity be turned to despair.

We look on man, not as a member of a sect, but as a child of God; and
once more, we ask, if he is not an infinite offender, nor yet
incorrigible, is he not worth the correction? If his purity and
happiness be within the bounds of possibility, if his eternal misery by
any degree of energy can be averted, are we to believe that a God who
has infinite benevolence _wills_ him to perish; are we to believe that a
God who has infinite power will exert none of it to save the most
glorious of his works from utter destruction? Can we suppose that God,
omnipotent and most wise, would reverse eternally such capacities for
goodness and happiness, and instead of training them to be instruments
of boundless utility, would condemn them to be agents of eternal evil?
Will not God rather choose to sow the field of everlasting life with
seeds of holiness and bliss, than to scathe it to a ruin and a
wilderness? I would not strip the future of its awe; no terror can be
equal to the truth; it is the most solemn anticipation that can ever
come upon the mind, and I maintain that nothing the most fearing
imagination conceived in its wildest apprehensions ever equalled the
reality: but, for God’s universe and for God’s creatures, there is
always hope; in God’s power and wisdom there are limitless means, and at
last there will be universal peace and universal emancipation. If
creatures are not ultimately and universally happy, it must be either
from the want of ability in God, or the want of inclination; and this
difficulty pressing itself on the mind of a powerful and pious orthodox
writer, he chose, in accounting for the loss of souls, to suppose that
theologians had mistaken in their theories the nature of divine
omnipotence; that love and power have distinct offices; but if he were
to circumscribe either attribute in God, it would be power and not love.
On the ground of an eternal perdition, such attribute as a _moral_
omnipotence can truly be ascribed to God. The able writer to whom I have
alluded has seen to the bottom of the difficulty, and believing as he
does most sincerely in eternal suffering, believing also as he does with
equal sincerity in the infinite love of God, he is compelled so far as
the human will is concerned to circumscribe the sphere and action of
divine omnipotence, or rather to deny it altogether. “The truth is,” he
says, “that the only rational conclusion we can arrive at in the matter,
is that in the nature of things no such attribute can exist. And until
the cloud, which its supposed existence throws on every procedure of
divine providence, is dissipated, we must either not think at all, or
think amiss on that subject in comparison of which all other subjects
are unimportant, namely the character of God: I know that many may, at
first sight, be startled at the assertion, that the power of God can in
any sense be limited. In this, as in various instances, they will object
to the same truth as a distinct proposition, which they will freely
assume and take for granted in all their reasonings. These very persons
will speak of Providence as devising means and moving by gradual
advancement to the accomplishment of an end. If asked, why not decree
the end without the means? they answer, because it could not be
attained, at least so well, without them. If then, the term _could not_,
be at all admitted, (and how freely is this term applied to God in
Scripture!) no such thing as unrestricted omnipotence exists. It is not
that there is any limit in God. God forbid that I should dare to say so.
It is, that power in its own nature is limited. It can act only on
possibilities.... Even power itself is but a vague and unintelligible
notion, unless displayed to us as triumphing over difficulties, and
rising superior to obstacles. A sweeping omnipotence, which could by one
sovereign act of will, decree that in the nature of things neither
impediment nor resistance should exist, leaves no field even for power
itself to act on. Omnipotence such as this, at least supplies no
materials for man to comprehend or adore. No: we are constructed
otherwise. Our faculties are so framed as to correspond with the truth
and reality of things. The power that fills the soul with wonder and
with praise is that which the Scripture of truth exhibits: that power in
which God arises that his enemies may be scattered; that omnipotence by
which he produces good out of evil, and subdues the most unyielding
substances and stubborn elements into himself. But still more, as it
respects the wisdom of God, is it necessary to dismiss the notion of an
absolute omnipotence before the former attribute can shine forth in its
true glory. For surely, according to our conceptions, it would be more
wise to arrive at once, if that were possible, at all that means, and
contrivances, and processes can accomplish, than to prefer elaborate and
circuitous courses, merely for the sake of going round about to do what
could be done as well in the twinkling of an eye. And yet in what does
the divine wisdom as apprehensible by us consist? What are the views and
discoveries which lead us, with the apostle, to exclaim, ‘Oh, the depths
of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God?’ Is it not in
those very procedures which if unbounded power existed would be folly
and not wisdom, that all the treasures of the infinite mind are
manifested? in adapting means to ends, in pursuing the path of light
amidst surrounding darkness, in harmonizing discordant principles, and
bringing order out of confusion?”

After a few other remarks, the author proceeds to maintain his position
by the testimony of Scripture.—“To quote Scripture,” he observes, “as
fully as I might upon this subject, would be, in a measure, to
transcribe the Bible. I shall content myself with producing three
passages, which, though not of the directer kind, bear, I think,
irresistibly on the point. The first is Ezek. xxxiii. 11. ‘As I live,
saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but
that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye, from all
your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?’ The second is
Isa. v. 3, 4. ‘And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah,
judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done
more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I
looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes.’
The last which I shall quote is Matt. xxiii. 37, 38. ‘O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even
as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’” “Is this, then, I would
ask any fair and candid person, who looks as if the All-gracious being
who employs it, had any relief or remedy in reserve for those who
wilfully reject the mercies he has freely offered them? Are these like
the expressions of one who could bestow salvation in any other way, or
any other terms? Do they not resemble rather the tender complaints and
anxious warnings of a parent who had done all he could do, and proposed
all that he had to propose, to rescue his child from ruin, and who must
at last, with agonizing reluctance, give up that child, if he would
still pursue those courses whose end is inevitable destruction? And if
such be the characters in which God has been pleased to reveal himself;
if such be the words which he has actually spoken, are we to be wise
above what is written? Is it honouring God to say he uses a language to
work upon our feelings, which language is in reality a misrepresentation
of the truth; a misrepresentation, nevertheless, so ill contrived, that,
after all, it does not deceive us? Or is it exalting his great name, to
magnify the mere natural attribute of his power, above those moral
attributes in which consist at once his essence and his glory? No. If it
be indeed reverence to God, to dismiss him altogether from our minds,
then all such considerations are set at rest for ever. But if it be our
duty, not only to think of him, but to bear him in all our thoughts,
then in all around us we see this truth inscribed, that there is a limit
in power or a limit in love. In which shall we place it?—In power? Then
we place it not in God, but in his lowest attribute.—In love? Then
indeed we place the limit in God himself—‘God is love.’”[605]

The reasoning of this passage is most cogent, the dilemma is inevitable.
If there be eternal sin and eternal perdition; if there be not ultimate
and universal regeneration, limit there must be in love or in power: but
holding as we do the doctrine of progressive discipline, we place limit
in neither, and we glorify both. Strange it is, that while thus
magnifying God in the highest of his attributes, in the harmony and
perfection of his nature, while thus trusting him with the faith of
children, notwithstanding many things in his providence mysterious and
inexplicable, in despite of the sin and misery that surround us, filling
the human mind and human destiny with painful and perplexing problems,
we believe him to be all-powerful as he is all-good; yet in thus
believing we are set down by Trinitarians as rebels against heaven, and
blasphemers of our Creator. If reverence to God demand us to believe
that the smoke of eternal torment from the depths of an unfathomable
hell is an incense well pleasing in his sight, or an evil which he must
endure but has no power to remove, then that is an honour we do not and
we cannot give: that is not the God we worship; that is not the God we
can love: and if to believe in God be to think him such as Calvin and
others have pictured him, then at once take not only the name of
Christians from us, but in addition stigmatize us with that of atheists.

III. To limit the power of God in order to justify his love, is the
struggle of a humane and benignant nature against a dark and stern
theology; but writers in orthodox divinity, whom it would be too tedious
to catalogue, have not scrupled to go the whole length along the line of
fearful consequences to which their system led them. They have not
hesitated to plead for the eternity of hell’s torments _the glory of
God_; strange idea indeed of the glory of God, to contemplate him as the
author of everlasting pain and everlasting sin. We think that every
attribute of God, in every manifestation, is directly against this
doctrine. His omniscience is against it. He must have known from all
eternity the destiny of the lost: and with this knowledge, on the
orthodox theory, he made creatures with the direct foresight of their
everlasting misery and everlasting destruction. His omnipotence is
against it. I have shown by the long extract I have before quoted, that
the profound and consistent theological reasoner who believes in eternal
perdition cannot believe in a moral omnipotence. An all-powerful being
must be either infinitely malignant or infinitely benevolent. If God
were the one, he could find delight only in the suffering of his
creatures; and he wills not to relieve them, because he does not will
them to be happy. But this idea is utterly repugnant to the first
principles of religion. If God be, as we believe he is, the other, he
can have no motive to make his children, the work of his own hands,
endlessly wretched; and having the power, he has also the will to redeem
them. A progressive universe is, therefore, the only true solution to
God’s providence, and God’s prescience. Divine justice, it is said,
demands it. What, then, is divine justice? Is this divine justice
identical with vengeance? Is it divine justice, to make the everlasting
torture of a race—for the saved are but the gleanings—a sacrifice to
boundless self-glorification? Is it divine justice to array all the
force of infinite attributes against a limited, a weak, and erring
creature? Is it divine justice to meet the offence of ephemeral
mortality with the agony of deathless torture and of resistless wrath?
If this be _divine_ justice, we have reason to rejoice that it is not
_human_ justice. Such justice is but naked malignity; and this view of
it is the more firmly established when we further consider that, by the
orthodox theology, all is the result of a foregone conclusion, the last
term of a dark progression, the execution of a cause uttered in the
black womb of eternity, for which the wretches are prepared by the
inheritance of a corrupt nature in a corrupt world, and lest all natural
causes should be insufficient, by an exposure to the unseen snares of a
Satan profound in cunning, mighty in malice, and, by himself and his
agents, all but omnipotent and omnipresent. This argument from divine
justice is urged so frequently and earnestly, that I shall here
transcribe a few remarks from a writer who has treated the subject with
equal force of logic and fervour of eloquence. “Justice and goodness,”
he observes, “are the same. Justice requires no more punishment for sin
than goodness: goodness requires the same as justice, but the manner in
which benevolence manifests itself under the form of goodness and of
justice is different, and, therefore, requires a different appellation.
A person who forgives an offence upon repentance and reformation is
good: this is one modification of goodness, which, by way of eminence,
is often called goodness itself, or more strictly mercy: the person who
visits an offence which is neither repented of, nor amended with a
proper degree of pain, is also good: this is another modification of
goodness to which the term justice is applied. Mercy and justice,
therefore, do not differ from each other in their nature, since they
equally arise from benevolence, and they differ in aspect only according
to the moral condition of the being with regard to whom they are
exemplified. This account of divine justice explains, in the most
satisfactory manner, the principle on which Deity rewards and punishes
mankind. Did men never violate the laws of rectitude, he would make them
invariably and completely happy. But there is no person who is free from
fault: the moral state of every individual is, in some respect or at
some period, such as it ought not to be. Every bad disposition, and
every improper habit, must be rectified before happiness can be enjoyed.
It is necessary, therefore, that the moral governor of the world should
vary his conduct according to the character of the person whom he has to
treat; that he should visit the good with favour, and manifest his
disapprobation of the wicked; for, if he were to make happiness
compatible with sin, it could not be corrected. The effect of pain is to
make us dislike and avoid that which causes it. It is for this reason
pain is annexed to sin. Sin is an evil which it is necessary to remove;
pain is employed as the instrument of its destruction; and that
principle by which Deity has established this constitution of things, by
which he so regulates events as invariably to secure the ultimate reward
of goodness, and the punishment of wickedness, is distinguished by the
term justice.... Were it necessary to add any thing more to show that
divine justice is not inconsistent with the attribute of goodness, but a
part of it, the consideration of the design of its inflictions would
afford further evidence of this truth. Every violation of the law of God
involves the transgressor, sooner or later, in suffering; and of this
constitution of things, by which pain is inseparably connected with
deviation from rectitude, the Supreme Being is the author. Why did he
appoint it? Why did he so dispose the whole tendency of his moral
government as to ensure this consequence? Why does he, who is a being of
unerring wisdom and infinite benevolence, never suffer any offence which
is unrepented of to escape punishment? Since his very nature is love,
and since he created all his intelligent offspring in order to make them
happy, it can be no gratification to him to involve them in suffering.
Their groans can be no music to his ear. If he afflict them, it must be,
not for his own gratification, but for their benefit.... Viewing then
the attribute of justice, which has been supposed to require the endless
misery of the greater part of the human race, as that very principle
which is designed to prevent this terrible consequence, (a man) feels
himself capable of relying with implicit confidence on the decisions of
the judge, both with regard to himself and all mankind. He is satisfied
that he will treat even the most criminal with perfect equity; that he
will place them in circumstances the best adapted to their unhappy
condition; that his discipline will ultimately accomplish its end, and
extirpate sin and misery from the creation.”[606] If the doctrine of
eternal torment be contradictory to God’s justice, much more is it to
his wisdom: for surely it is not wise to create only to destroy;—to
perpetuate endless moral conflict—not only to destroy and confuse, but
to destroy and confuse the best and noblest of his works—to inflict
undying anguish on capacities suited for undying happiness, to ruin
every faculty and to blast every hope. Nor is the doctrine less opposed
to his holiness than to his wisdom. Improved ideas on the philosophy of
our spiritual nature, and on the real purport of moral retribution, with
the penalties of sin, imply the continuance of sin. A material hell or a
material heaven by the thinking portion of all sects is in general
exploded. Sin carries with it and creates its own punishments: if sin
then be eternal and progressive in its sufferings, it must also be
eternal and progressive in its existence and its evils. Hell is not
merely a region of unutterable horror, where wretches writhe in eternal
torture, but also a region of boundless sin, of malignant wickedness, of
hopeless corruption, of vilest affections, of basest passions. What
shall we then say of an infinite holiness, enlightened by infinite
wisdom, armed with infinite power, allowing this condition to exist? If
the doctrine of eternal torment be true, no such attribute as divine
mercy can have being: if this doctrine be true, a God of goodness is a
fiction of imagination, the creation of a brain-sick enthusiasm, the
dream of amiable but unfounded hopes. It is of no purpose to qualify in
these things: there is no room in the same universe for a good God and
an eternal hell: if this doctrine be true, the past is a wreck, and the
future a curse. To such a condition of existence annihilation were a
preferable alternative. It were better the brain should at once moulder
with the thoughtless sod, than be tortured with the wilderings of
everlasting contradictions; it were better the affections should perish
with the last earthly sigh than throb through an eternity of agonized or
selfish existence. On the orthodox supposition, either man must lose his
identity and go to heaven without remembering whom he knew and loved in
life, or he must lose his sympathy, become apostate to all his better
feelings, and see without pain or pity many given over to despair with
whom on earth he walked in dearest friendship. Instead of the big tear
which would have burst from his eye in the years of mortality at the
thought even of a partial separation; instead of the affectionate and
instinctive anguish which would have torn his breast, as he saw the last
vision in the sun, and the last flutter in the breeze of the sail which
was wafting his friend to another clime; he must approve the sentence,
nay, some maintain, he must see its execution with triumph, which may
consign his nearest and dearest to endless damnation.—If the belief
could be habitually and practically realized, that human souls were
every minute over the wide earth dropping into hell, that amongst the
sighs of death with which the world is filled, the greater number are
the knells of infinite perdition, that the graves on which the mourners
weep, which to us all, at one time or other, make earth a vale of tears,
are so many monuments of irreparable wreck, the silent witnesses of
God’s anger and man’s despair; if any one, I repeat, could constantly,
and in very truth, believe that souls were thus quitting the present
scene, souls with enlarged capacities, but enlarged for eternal sorrow,
and ever smile again, he might wear the form of his species, but he
should have the heart of a fiend. Faith in such a doctrine should kill
at once the life of joy; every sound should be funereal, brightness or
beauty there should be none. Each of us, like Job, should curse the day
of his birth, but with a more terrible earnestness; the exclamation of
Jeremiah would be in every mouth an appropriate utterance, “Oh that my
head were waters, and my eyes were fountains of tears!” Is there the
human being that could feel joy in the midst of an hospital, could laugh
in a city of the plague, while death went from couch to couch, while
mirth was banished from each hearth, and the grass of desolation growing
in the streets? But how much more should all delight be banished from
the soul, if in the Creator’s universe there be a dark and measureless
region, filled with hideous abominations and unexpiring torments! If
thus it be, let there, I repeat, be no look of happiness, let there be
no voice of sweetness; let garment of praise be changed for the spirit
of heaviness; let all heads be bent in grief, and all eyes dim with
weeping, in lamentation for the sorrows of the universe. But be it not
so—leave us at least a gleam of light from heaven.

“Cease every joy to glimmer o’er my mind,
But leave, oh! leave, the light of hope behind.”

Oh no! God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner, no glory in the
pain or punishment of his creatures: it is the progress towards
universal blessedness, and its final consummation, that truly shows
forth the glory of God, and manifests the grandeur of his name and
nature—more sweetly than the earth, more majestically than the heavens.
It shows forth his justice: he punishes, terribly, it may be, but not
cruelly or hopelessly; he punishes, but he amends; he chastises, but he
purifies. It shows forth his wisdom: for universal holiness and
universal happiness are the mightiest objects which infinite wisdom
could select, the highest purposes in which infinite wisdom could be
manifested: It shows forth his power, not in a blasting malediction, but
in a creative and all-dispensing love; not in the thunder of
destruction, but in the hand of a Father full of gifts and full of
blessings:—subduing evil, distributing happiness, drawing out of
apparent confusion order and harmony, more fair and beautiful than the
worlds he has called out of darkness; “moving upon the face of many a
stormy wave, and blending into calm what seemed only the chaos of
contending elements.”

It is marvellous that we can think seriously on existence or on
providence, that we can reflect on human nature or survey human life,
without feeling the need as well as the truth of the doctrine of the
full mercy of God, and of his universally benignant designs for all his
children. True, creation is fair, and much of existence is happy; but
still there are evils and miseries which ever perplex us for solution.
If the view of God’s government which we receive, does not solve all the
difficulties, at the very least it softens them; if there are
inscrutable things in the providence of God which it cannot explain,
there are atrocities ascribed by other systems to this character which
it does not involve. We may mourn over the wrongs, sufferings, and sins,
which exist with fatal abundance in our present state; we may wonder and
think why they exist at all; but to what an extent of perplexity and
pain are we driven, if we are to believe that all these evils are to be
for ever, and to have no remedy. When I see those who bear want and
sorrow through many and heavy years, I rejoice that there is at last a
home and refuge for them in their father’s kingdom where they who were
poor shall be made rich; where those who mourned shall be comforted:
when I hear the sigh of pain, when I behold the power of death; when I
know, as all must, in how many human dwellings grief sits lonely on the
hearth, I am saved from a fearful and dangerous distrust by the belief,
that in times to come, and in regions which we know not of, there is a
balm for every grief and a remedy for every sin. None are unaware of the
physical and the moral evils that hang over and around this existence;
and both from the felt experience of our own hearts, and the recorded
experience of many others, we can judge the infinite complexity of moral
struggle, the subtleties of sin, and the miserable consequences of evil
doings; and we cannot think that a good, a holy, a just, and merciful
God can ordain such a state to be perpetual and eternal. We know,
moreover, how many are in the thick darkness of barbarism, each having
within a universe of infinite and improvable capacities; we know what
millions are in the dens of indigence, of crime, and ignorance, for whom
earth is barren and life a burthen: and in what thought are we to take
comfort, in what sentiment are we to find hope, if we believe not there
is a God who does not forget his orphan children in their worst estate;
that as here they have received their evil things, there is a heaven
where they have their good? And when we observe in this life so much of
antagonist passions; so much war and strife; so much of bitter and
hopeless alienation, our tired spirits wish for a retreat of peace; and
with the Psalmist we long for the wings of a dove that we might flee
away and be at rest; for a calm sky after a heated atmosphere; for a
union of heart and charity which no mistakes could again divide. We have
no need to fear that our high aspirations for the future shall make us
proud or presumptuous; for we have all enough in our present lot to keep
us humble. When we look within, we find a melancholy strife between our
nobler and our higher existence, which we can never entirely overcome:
when we cast our gaze over the face of the world, and the inequalities
of life, and there in the strong-holds of sin and selfishness see so
many causes of wickedness and pain, which the most believing and the
most hoping can never hope entirely to overcome; when we regard our
feeble powers and our short existence; our desires ever growing and
wants ever deepening, and our passions ever craving; when we think of
the knowledge we longed for, and could not have, the visions we dreamed
of that never came, the good we resolved on and never did, the felicity
we sought and never found, the wishes that were as empty as the echo in
the desert, the ideas, the plans, the aspirations, and the purposes that
vainly struggled for life, but found in our breasts their prison and
their grave; we shall be in no danger of thinking of ourselves more
highly than we ought to think.

Blessed and beautiful doctrine is this, of universal redemption and
restoration, which pours such a radiance over our groping obscurity,
which gives our troubled hearts such peace, which softens grief and
glorifies affection, which corrects the perverse and dignifies the
lowly, which nourishes whatever in our nature is great or god-like,
renders religion transcendent and lovely, and opens before the rejoicing
eye of faith the grandeur of a renovated and an emancipated universe.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture XII.

Footnote 601:

See Ex. xxi. 1-6. Eccles. i. 4. 1 Cor. viii. 13. Gen. xvii. 8, 13, 19.
Numb. xxv. 13.

Footnote 602:

1 John iv. 16; John iii. 16, 17.

Footnote 603:

Ps. xcv. 8, 9, 10; Ps. xxxiv. 8; Ps. lii. 1; Exod. xxxiv. 6, 7; 2
Chron. xxx. 9; Ps. ciii. 8, &c.; Matt. vi. 9; Ps. xxx. 5; Ps. ciii. 9;
Ps. lxxxvii. 7; Isa. lxvii. 16; Wisdom of Solomon, xi. 23-26.

Footnote 604:

Dr. Southwood Smith on the Divine Government.

Footnote 605:

Essays, &c., by the Rev. Henry Woodward: Essay xv. On the Nature of
the Divine Omnipotence.

Footnote 606:

Illustrations of the Divine Government, by T. Southwood Smith.

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LECTURE XIII.

CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST, AND WITHOUT RITUAL.

BY REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

“TO WHOM COMING, AS UNTO A LIVING STONE, DISALLOWED INDEED OF MEN, BUT
CHOSEN OF GOD, AND PRECIOUS; YE ALSO, AS LIVELY STONES, ARE BUILT UP
A SPIRITUAL HOUSE, A HOLY PRIESTHOOD, TO OFFER UP SPIRITUAL
SACRIFICES, ACCEPTABLE TO GOD BY JESUS CHRIST.”—1 _Peter_ ii. 4, 5.

The formation of human society, and the institution of priesthood, must
be referred to the same causes and the same date. The earliest
communities of the world appear to have had their origin and their
cement, not in any gregarious instinct, nor in mere social affections,
much less in any prudential regard to the advantages of co-operation,
but in a binding religious sentiment, submitting to the same guidance,
and expressing itself in the same worship. As no tie can be more strong,
so is none more primitive, than this agreement respecting what is holy
and divine. In simple and patriarchal ages indeed, when the feelings of
veneration had not been set aside by analysis into a little corner of
the character, but spread themselves over the whole of life, and mixed
it up with daily wonder, this bond comprised all the forces that can
suppress the selfish and disorganizing passions, and compact a multitude
of men together. It was not, as at present, to have simply the same
_opinions_ (things of quite modern growth, the brood of scepticism); but
to have the same Fathers, the same Tradition, the same Speech, the same
Land, the same Foes, the same Priest, the same God. Nothing did man
fear, or trust, or love, or desire, that did not belong, by some
affinity, to his faith. Nor had he any book to keep the precious deposit
for him; and if he had, he would never have thought of so frail a
vehicle for so great a treasure. It was more natural to put it into
structures hollowed in the fast mountain, or built of transplanted rocks
which only a giant age could stir; and to tenant these with mighty
hierarchies, who should guard their sanctity, and, by an undying memory,
make their mysteries eternal. Hence, the first humanizer of men was
their worship; the first leaders of nations, the sacerdotal caste; the
first triumph of art, the colossal temple; the first effort to preserve
an idea, produced a record of something sacred; and the first
civilization was, as the last will be, the birth of religion.

The primitive aim of worship undoubtedly was, to act upon the sentiments
of God; at first, by such natural and intelligible means, as produce
favourable impressions on the mind of a fellow man;—by presents and
persuasion, and whatever is expressive of grateful and reverential
affections. Abel, the first shepherd, offered the produce of his flock;
Cain, the first farmer, the fruits of his land; and while devotion was
so simple in its modes, every one would be his own pontiff, and have his
own altar. But soon, the parent would inevitably officiate for his
family; the patriarch, for his tribe. With the natural forms dictated by
present feelings, traditional methods would mingle their contributions
from the past; postures and times, gestures and localities, once
indifferent, would become consecrated by venerable habit; and so long as
their origin was unforgotten, they would add to the significance, while
they lessened the simplicity of worship. Custom, however, being the
growth of time, tends to a tyrannous and bewildering complexity: forms,
originally natural, then symbolical, end in being arbitrary; suggestive
of nothing, except to the initiated; yet, if connected with religion, so
sanctified by the association, that it appears sacrilege to desist from
their employment; and when their meaning is lost, they assume their
place, not among empty gesticulations, but among the mystical signs by
which earth communes with heaven. The vivid picture-writing of the early
worship, filled with living attitudes, and sketched in the freshest
colours of emotion, explained itself to every eye, and was open to every
hand. To this succeeded a piety, which expressed itself in symbolical
figures, veiling it utterly from strangers, but intelligible and
impressive still to the soul of national tradition. This, however,
passed again into a language of arbitrary characters, in which the herd
of men saw sacredness without meaning; and the use of which must be
consigned to a class separated for its study. Hence the origin of the
priest and his profession; the conservator of a worship no longer
natural, but legendary and mystical; skilful enactor of rites that spake
with silent gesticulation to the heavens; interpreter of the wants of
men into the divine language of the gods. Not till the powers above had
ceased to hold familiar converse with the earth, and in their distance
had become deaf and dumb to the common tongue of men, did the mediating
priest arise;—needed then to conduct the finger-speech of ceremony,
whereby the desire of the creature took shape before the eye of the
Creator.

Observe then the true idea of PRIEST and RITUAL. The Priest is the
representative of men before God; commissioned on behalf of human nature
to intercede with the divine. He bears a message _upwards_, from earth
to heaven; his people being below, his influence above. He takes the
fears of the weak, and the cries of the perishing, and sets them with
availing supplication before him that is able to help. He takes the sins
and remorse of the guilty, and leaves them with expiating tribute at the
feet of the averted Deity. He guards the avenues that lead from the
mortal to the immortal, and without his interposition the creature is
cut off from his Creator. Without his mediation, no transaction between
them can take place, and the spirit of a man must live as an outlaw from
the world invisible and holy. There are means of propitiation which he
alone has authority to employ; powers of persuasion conceded to no
other; a mystic access to the springs of divine benignity, by outward
rites which his manipulation must consecrate, or forms of speech which
his lips must recommend. These ceremonies are the implements of his
office, and the sources of his power; the magic by which he is thought
to gain admission to the will above, and really wins rule over human
counsels below. As they are supposed to change the relation of God to
man, not by visible or natural operation, not (for example) by
suggestion of new thoughts, and excitement of new dispositions in the
worshipper, but by secret and mysterious agency, they are simply
_spells_ of a dignified order. Were we then to speak with severe
exactitude, we should say, a Ritual is a system of consecrated charms;
and the Priest, the great magician who dispenses them.

So long as any idea is retained, of mystically efficacious rites,
consigned solely and authoritatively to certain hands, this definition
cannot be escaped. The ceremonies may have rational instruction and
natural worship appended to them; and these additional elements may give
them a title to true respect. The order of men appointed to administer
them, may have other offices and nobler duties to perform, rendering
them, if faithful, worthy of a just and reverential attachment. But _in
so far_ as, by an exclusive and unnatural efficacy, they bring about a
changed relation between God and man, the Ritual is an incantation, and
the Priest is an enchanter.

To this sacerdotal devotion, there necessarily attach certain
characteristic sentiments, both moral and religious, which give it a
distinctive influence on human character, and adapt it to particular
stages of civilization. It clearly severs the worshippers by one remove
from God. He is a Being, external to them, distant from them, personally
unapproachable by them; their thought must _travel_ to reach the
Almighty; they must look afar for the Most Holy; they dwell themselves
within the finite, and must ask a foreign introduction to the Infinite.
He is not with them as a private guide, but in the remoter watch-towers
of creation, as the public inspector of their life; not present for
perpetual communion, but to be visited in absence by stated messages of
form and prayer. And that God dwells in this cold and royal separation,
induces the feeling that man is too mean to touch him; that a
consecrated intervention is required, in order to part Deity from the
defiling contact of humanity. Why else am I restricted from unlimited
personal access to my Creator, and driven to another in my transactions
with him? And so, in this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in
alliance, with the divine, and those views of it are favoured which make
the opposition strong; its puny dimensions, its swift decadence, its
poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its giant guilt, become
familiar to the thought and lips; and life, cut off from sympathy with
the godlike, falls towards the level of melancholy, or the sink of
epicurism, or the abjectness of vicarious reliance on the priest.
Worship, too, must have for its chief aim, to throw off the load of ill;
to rid the mind of sin and shame, and the lot of hardship and sorrow;
for principally to these disburthening offices do priests and rituals
profess themselves adapted:—and who, indeed, could pour forth the
privacy of love, and peace, and trust, through the cumbrousness of
ceremonies, and the pompousness of a sacred officer? The piety of such a
religion is thus a refuge for the weakness, not an outpouring of the
strength of the soul: it takes away the incubus of darkness, without
shedding the light of heaven; lifts off the nightmare horrors of earth
and hell, without opening the vision of angels and of God. Nay, for the
spiritual bonds which connect men with the Father above, it substitutes
material ties, a genealogy of sacred fires, a succession of hallowed
buildings, or of priests having consecration by pedigree or by manual
transmission; so that qualities belonging to the soul alone, are likened
to forces mechanical or chemical; sanctity becomes a physical property:
divine acceptance comes by bodily catenation; regeneration is degraded
into a species of electric shock, which one only method of experiment,
and the links of but one conductor, can convey. And, in fine, a priestly
system ever abjures all aim at any higher perfection; boasts of being
immutable and unimprovable; encourages no ambition, breathes no desire.
It holds the appointed methods of influencing heaven, on which none may
presume to innovate; and its functions are ever the same, to employ and
preserve the ancient forms and legendary spells committed to its trust.
Hence all its veneration is antiquarian, not sympathetic or prospective;
it turns its back upon the living, and looks straight into departed
ages, bowing the head and bending the knee; as if all objects of love
and devotion were _there_, not here; in history, not in life; as if its
God were dead, or otherwise imprisoned in the Past, and had bequeathed
to its keeping such relics as might yield a perpetual benediction. Thus
does the administration of religion, in proportion as it possesses a
sacerdotal character, involve a distant Deity, a mean humanity, a
servile worship, a physical sanctity, and a retrospective reverence.

Let no one, however, imagine, that there is no other idea or
administration of religion than this; that the priest is the only person
among men, to whom it is given to stand between heaven and earth. Even
the Hebrew Scriptures introduce us to another class of quite different
order; to whom, indeed, those Scriptures owe their own truth and power,
and perpetuity of beauty; I mean the PROPHETS; whom we shall very
imperfectly understand, if we suppose them mere historians, for whom God
had turned time round the other way, so that they spoke of things future
as if past, and grew so dizzy in their use of tenses, as greatly to
incommode learned grammarians; or if we treat their writings as
scrap-books of Providence, with miscellaneous contributions from various
parts of duration, sketches taken indifferently from any point of view
within eternity, and put together at random and without mark, on
adjacent pages, for theological memories to identify; first, a picture
of an Assyrian battle, next, a holy family; now of the captives sitting
by Euphrates, then, of Paul preaching to the Gentiles; here, a flight of
devouring locusts, and there, the escape of the Christians from the
destruction of Jerusalem; a portrait of Hezekiah, and a view of Calvary;
a march through the desert, and John the Baptist by the Jordan; the day
of Pentecost, and the French Revolution; Nebuchadnezzar and Mahomet;
Caligula and the Pope,—following each other with picturesque neglect of
every relation of time and place. No, the Prophet and his work always
indeed belong to the future; but far otherwise than thus. Meanwhile, let
us notice how, in Israel, as elsewhere, he takes his natural station
above the priest. It was Moses the prophet who even _made_ Aaron the
priest. And who cares now for the sacerdotal books of the Old Testament,
compared with the rest? Who, having the strains of David, would pore
over Leviticus, or would weary himself with Chronicles, when he might
catch the inspiration of Isaiah! It was no priest that wrote, “Thou
desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in
burnt offering: the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and
a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[607] It was no
pontifical spirit that exclaimed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense
is an abomination to me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of
assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting:
your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a
trouble unto me: I am weary to bear them.” “Wash you, make you
clean.”[608] Whatever, in these venerable scriptures, awes us by its
grandeur, and pierces us by its truth, comes of the prophets, not the
priests; and from that part of their writings too, in which they are not
concerned with historical prediction, but with some utterance deeper and
greater. I do not deny them this gift of occasional intellectual
foresight of events. And doubtless it was an honour, to be permitted to
speak thus to a portion of the future, and of local occurrences
unrevealed to seers less privileged. But it is a glory far higher, to
speak that which belongs to all time, and finds its interpretation in
every place; to penetrate to the everlasting realities of things; to
disclose, not when this or that man will appear, but how and wherefore
all men appear and quickly disappear; to make it felt, not in what nook
of duration such an incident will happen, but from what all-embracing
eternity the images of history emerge and are swallowed up. In this
highest faculty, the Hebrew seers belong to a class, scattered over
every nation and every period; which Providence keeps ever extant for
human good, and especially to furnish an administration of religion
quite anti-sacerdotal. This class we must proceed to characterize.

The Prophet is the representative of God before men, commissioned from
the Divine nature to sanctify the human. He bears a message _downwards_,
from heaven to earth; his inspirer being above, his influence below. He
takes of the holiness of God, enters with it into the souls of men, and
heals therewith the wounds, and purifies the taint, of sin. He is
charged with the peace of God, and gives from it rest to the weariness,
and solace to the griefs of men. Instead of carrying the foulness of
life to be cleansed in Heaven, he brings the purity of Heaven to make
life divine. Instead of interposing himself and his mediation between
humanity and Deity, he destroys the whole distance between them; and
only fulfils his mission, when he brings the finite mind and the
infinite into immediate and thrilling contact, and leaves the creature
consciously alone with the Creator. He is one to whom the primitive and
everlasting relations between God and man have revealed themselves,
stripped of every disguise, and bared of all that is conventional; who
is possessed by their simplicity, mastered by their solemnity; who has
found the secret of meeting the Holy Spirit within, rather than without;
and knows, but cannot tell, how in the strife of genuine duty, or in
moments of true meditation, the divine immensity and love have touched
and filled his naked soul; and taught him by what fathomless Godhead he
is folded round, and on what adamantine manhood he must take his stand.
So far from separating others from the heavenly communion vouchsafed to
himself, he necessarily believes that all may have the same godlike
consciousness; burns to impart it to them; and by the vivid light of his
own faith, speedily creates it in those who feel his influence; drawing
out and freshening the faded colours of the divine image in their souls,
till they too become visibly the seers and the sons of God. His
instruments, like the objects of his mission, are human; not mysteries,
and mummeries, and such arbitrary things, by which others may pretend to
be talking with the skies; but the natural language which interprets
itself at once to every genuine man, and goes direct to the living point
of every heart. An earnest speech, a brave and holy life, truth of
sympathy, severity of conscience, freshness and loftiness of
faith,—these natural sanctities are his implements of power: and if
heaven be pleased to add any other gifts, still are they weapons
all,—not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom,—but forged in the
inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows beneath the breath of
God, framing things of etherial temper. Thus armed, he lays undoubting
siege to the world’s conscience; tears down every outwork of pretence;
forces its strongholds of delusion; humbles the vanities at its centre,
and proclaims it the citadel of God. The true prophet of every age is no
believer in the temple, but in the temple’s Deity; trusts, not rites and
institutions, but the heart and soul that fill or ought to fill them; if
they speak the truth, no one so reveres them; if a lie, they meet with
no contempt like his. He sees no indestructible sanctuary but the mind
itself, wherein the Divine Spirit ever loves to dwell; and whence it
will be sure to go forth and build such outward temple as may suit the
season of Providence. He is conscious that there is no devotion like
that which comes spontaneously from the secret places of our humanity,
no orisons so true as those which rise from the common platform of our
life. He desires only to throw himself in faith on the natural piety of
the heart. Give him but that; and he will find for man an everlasting
worship, and raise for God a cathedral worthy of his infinitude.

It is evident that one thoroughly possessed with this spirit could never
be, and could never make, a priest: nor frame a ritual for priests
already made. He is destitute of the ideas, out of which alone these
things can be created. His mission is in the opposite direction: he
interprets and reveals God to men, instead of interceding for men with
God. In this office sacerdotal rites have no function and no place. I do
not say that he must necessarily disapprove and abjure them, or deny
that he may directly sanction them. If he does however, it is not in his
capacity of prophet, but in conformity with feelings which his proper
office has left untouched. His tendency will be against ceremonialism:
and on his age and position will depend the extent to which this
tendency takes effect. Usually, he will construct nothing ritual, will
destroy much, and leave behind great and growing ideas, destructive of
much more. But ere we quit our general conception of a prophet, let us
notice some characteristic sentiments, moral and religious, which
naturally connect themselves with his faith; comparing them with those
which belong to the sacerdotal influence.

In this faith, God is separated by nothing from his worshippers. He is
not simply in contact with them, but truly in the interior of their
nature: so that they may not only meet him in the outward providences of
life, but bear his spirit with them, when they go to toil and conflict,
and find it still, when they sit alone to think and pray. He is not the
far observer, but the very present help, of the faithful will. No
structure made with hands, nay, not even his own architecture of the
heaven of heavens, contains and confines his presence: were there any
dark recess whence these were hid, the blessed access would be without
hindrance still; and the soul would discern him near as its own
identity. No mean and ignoble conception can be entertained of a mind,
which is thus the residence of Deity;—the shrine of the Infinite must
have somewhat that is infinite itself. Thus, in this system, does our
nature appear in alliance with the Divine, not in contrast with it;
inspired with a portion of its holiness, and free to help forward the
best issues of its Providence. Human life, blessed by this spirit,
becomes a miniature of the work of the great Ruler: its
responsibilities, its difficulties, its temptations, become dignified as
the glorious theatre whereon we strive, by and with the good Spirit of
God, for the mastery over evil. Worship, issuing from a nature and
existence thus consecrated, is not the casting off of guilt and terror,
but the glad unburthening of love, and trust, and aspiration, the simple
speaking forth, as duty is the acting forth, of the divine within us;
not the prostration of the slave, but the embrace of the child; not the
plaint of the abject, but the anthem of the free. Is it not private,
individual? And may it not by silence say what it will, and intimate the
precise thing, and that only, which is at heart?—whence there grows
insensibly that firm root of excellence, truth with one’s own self. The
priestly fancy of an hereditary or lineal sacredness can have no place
here. The soul and God stand directly related, mind with mind, spirit
with spirit: from our moral fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy
with which we guard it from insult or neglect, does the only sanctity
arise; and herein there is none to help us, or give a vicarious
consecration. And finally, the spirit of God’s true prophet is earnestly
prospective; more filled with the conception of what the Creator _will_
make his world, than of what he _has_ already made it: detecting great
capacities, it glows with great hopes; knowing that God lives, and will
live, it turns from the past, venerable as that may be, and reverences
rather the promise of the present, and the glories of the future. It
esteems nothing unimproveable, is replete with vast desires; and amid
the shadows and across the wilds of existence chases, not vainly, a
bright image of perfection. The golden age, which priests with their
tradition put into the past, the prophet, with his faith and truth,
transfers into the future: and while the former pines and muses, the
latter toils and prays. Thus does the administration of religion, in
proportion as it partakes of the prophetic or anti-sacerdotal character,
involve the ideas of an interior Deity, a noble humanity, a loving
worship, an individual holiness, and a prospective veneration.

We have found, then, two opposite views of religion; that of the Priest
with his Ritual; and that of the Prophet with his Faith. I propose to
show that the Church of England, in its doctrine of sacraments,
coincides with the former of these, and sanctions all its objectionable
sentiments: and that Christianity, in every relation, even with respect
to its reputed rites, coincides with the latter.

The general conformity of the Church of England with the ritual
conception of religion, will not be denied by her own members. Their
denial will be limited to one point: they will protest that her formulas
of doctrine do not ascribe a _charmed efficacy_, or any operation upon
God, to the two sacraments. To avoid verbal disputes, let us consider
what we are to understand by a spell or charm. The name, I apprehend,
denotes any material object or outward act, the possession or use of
which is thought to confer safety or blessing, not by natural operation,
but by occult virtues, inherent in it, or mystical effects appended to
it. A mere commemorative sign, therefore, is not a charm, nor need there
be any superstition in its employment: it simply stands for certain
ideas and memories in our minds; re-excites and freshens them, not
otherwise than speech audibly records them, except that it summons them
before us by sight and touch, instead of sound. The effect, whatever it
may be, is purely natural, by sequence of thought on thought, till the
complexion of the mind is changed, and haply suffused with a noble glow.
But in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things having
efficacy at all; as desirable observances, under whose action we should
put ourselves, in order to get up certain good dispositions in the
heart. As soon as we see them acquiesced in, with this dutiful
submission to a kind of spiritual operation, we may be sure they are
already empty and dead. An _expedient_ commemoration, deliberately
maintained on utilitarian principles, for the sake of warming cold
affections by artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this
mechanical and sceptical age. It is quite true, that such influence is
found to belong to rites of remembrance; but only so long as it is not
privately looked into, or greedily contemplated by the staring eye of
prudence, but simply and unconsciously received. No; commemorations must
be the spontaneous fruit and outburst of a love already kindled in the
soul, not the factitious contrivance for forcing it into existence. They
are not the lighted match applied to the fuel on an altar cold: but the
shapes in which the living flame aspires, or the fretted lights thrown
by that central love on the dark temple-walls of this material life.

It is not pretended that the sacraments are mere commemorative rites.
And nothing, I submit, remains, but that they should be pronounced
charms. It is of little purpose to urge, in denial of this, that the
Church insists upon the necessity of faith on the part of the recipient,
without which no benefit, but rather peril, will accrue. This only
limits the use of the charm to a certain class, and establishes a
pre-requisite to its proper efficacy. It simply conjoins the outward
form with a certain state of mind, and gives to each of these a
participation in the effect. If the faith be insufficient without the
ceremony, then _some_ efficacy is due to the rite: and this, being
neither the natural operation of the material elements, nor a simple
suggestion of ideas and feelings to the mind, but mystical and
preternatural, is no other than a charmed efficacy.

Nor will the statement, that the effect is not upon God, but upon man,
bear examination. It is very true, that the _ultimate_ benefit of these
rites is a result reputed to fall upon the worshipper;—regeneration, in
the case of baptism; participation in the atonement, in the case of the
Lord’s Supper. But by what steps do these blessings descend? Not by
those of visible or perceived causation; but through an express and
extraordinary volition of God, induced by the ceremonial form, or taking
occasion from it. The sacerdotal economy, therefore, is so arranged,
that whenever the priest dispenses the water at the font, the Holy
Spirit follows, as in instantaneous compliance with a suggestion: and
whenever he spreads his hands over the elements at the communion, God
immediately establishes a preternatural relation, not subsisting the
moment before, between the substances on the table and the souls of the
faithful communicants: so that every partaker receives, either directly
or through supernatural increase of faith, some new share in the merits
of the cross. Whatever subtleties of language then may be employed, it
is evidently conceived that the first consequence of these forms takes
place in heaven; and that on this depends whatever benediction they may
bring: nor can a plain understanding frame any other idea of them than
this; first, they act upwards, and suggest something to the mind of God;
who then sends down an influence on the mind of the believer. From this
conception no figures of speech, no ingenious analogies, can deliver us.
Do you call the sacraments “pledges of grace?” A pledge means a promise:
and how a voluntary act of ours, or the priest’s, can be a promise made
to us by the Divine Being, it is not easy to understand. Do you call
them “seals of God’s covenant,”—the instrument by which he engages to
make over its blessings to the Christian, like the signature and
completion of a deed conveying an estate? It still perplexes us to think
of a service of our own as an assurance received by us from Heaven. And
one would imagine that the Divine promise, once given, were enough,
without this incessant binding by periodical legalities. If it be said,
“the renewal of the obligation is needful for us, and not for him;” then
call the rites at once and simply, our service of self-dedication, the
solemn memorial of our vows. And in spite of all metaphors, the question
recurs; does the covenant stand without these seals, or are they
essential _to give possession_ of the privileges conveyed? Are they, by
means preternatural, procurers of salvation? Have they a mystical action
towards this end? If so, we return to the same point; they have a
charmed efficacy on the human soul.

In order to establish this, nothing more is requisite than a brief
reference to the language of the Articles and Liturgical services of the
Church respecting Baptism and the Communion.

Baptism is regarded, throughout the Book of Common Prayer, as the
instrument of regeneration: not simply as its sign, of which the actual
descent of the Holy Spirit is independent; but as itself and essentially
the means or indispensable occasion of the washing away of sin. That
this is regarded as a mystical and magical, not a natural and spiritual
effect, is evident from the alleged fact of its occurrence in infants,
to whom the rite can suggest nothing, and on whom, in the course of
nature, it can leave no impression. Yet is it declared of the infant,
after the use of the water, “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that
_this child is regenerate_,” &c.: at the commencement of the service its
aim is said to be that God may “grant to this child that thing which by
nature he cannot have,”—“would wash him and sanctify him with the Holy
Ghost,” that he may be “delivered from God’s wrath.” Nothing, indeed, is
so striking in this office of the national church, as its audacious
trifling with solemn names, denoting qualities of the soul and will; the
ascription of spiritual and moral attributes, not only to the child in
whom they can yet have no development, but even to material substances;
the frivolity with which engagements with God are made by deputy, and
without the consent or even existence of the engaging will. Water is
said to possess _sanctity_, for “the mystical washing away of sin.”
Infants, destitute of any idea of duty or obligation to be resisted or
obeyed, are said to obtain “_remission of their sins_;”—to “renounce the
devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world:”
“steadfastly to believe” in the Apostles’ creed, and to be desirous of
“baptism into this faith.” Belief, desire, resolve, are acts of some
one’s mind: the language of this service attributes them to the
personality of the infant (_I_ renounce, _I_ believe, _I_ desire); yet
there they cannot possibly exist. If they are to be understood as
affirmed by the godfathers and godmothers of themselves, the case is not
improved: for how can one person’s state of faith and conscience be made
the condition of the regeneration of another? What intelligible meaning
can be attached to these phrases of sanctity applied to an age not
responsible? In what sense, and by what indication, are these children
_holier_ than others? And with what reason, if all this be Christianity,
can we blame the Pope for sprinkling holy water on the horses? The
service appears little better than a profane sacerdotal jugglery, by
which material things are impregnated with divine virtues, moral and
spiritual qualities of the mind are sported with, the holy spirit of God
is turned into a physical mystery, and the solemnity of personal
responsibility is insulted.

That a superstitious value is attributed to the details of the baptismal
form, in the Church of England, appears from certain parts of the
service for the private ministration of the rite. If a child has been
baptized by any other lawful minister than the minister of the parish,
strict inquiries are to be instituted by the latter respecting the
correctness with which the ceremony has been performed: and should the
prescribed rules have been neglected, the baptism is invalid, and must
be repeated. Yet great solicitude is manifested, lest danger should be
incurred by an unnecessary repetition of the sacrament: to guard against
which, the minister is to give the following conditional invitation to
the Holy Spirit; saying, in his address to the child, “_If_ thou art not
already baptized, I baptize thee,” &c. It is worthy of remark, that the
Church mentions as one of the _essentials_ of the service, the omission
of which necessitates its repetition, the use of the formula, “In the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” By this
rule, every one of the apostolic baptisms recorded in Scripture must be
pronounced invalid; and the Church of England, were it possible, would
perform them again: for in no instance does it appear that the apostles
employed either this or even any equivalent form of words.

That this sacrament is regarded as an indispensable channel of grace,
and positively necessary to salvation, is clear from the provision of a
short and private form, to be used in cases of extreme danger. The
prayers, and faith, and obedience, and patient love, of parents and
friends,—the dedication and heartfelt surrender of their child to God,
the profound application of their anxieties and grief to their
conscience and inward life,—all this, we are told, will be of no avail,
without the water and the priest. Archbishop Laud says, “That Baptism is
necessary to the salvation of infants (in the ordinary way of the
church, without binding God to the use and means of that sacrament, to
which he hath bound us) is expressed in St. John iii. ‘Except a man be
born of water,’ &c. So, no baptism, no entrance; nor can infants creep
in, any other ordinary way.”[609] Bishop Bramhall says, “Wilful neglect
of baptism we acknowledge to be a damnable sin; and, without repentance
and God’s extraordinary mercy, to exclude a man from all hope of
salvation. But yet, if such a person, before his death, shall repent and
deplore his neglect of the means of grace, from his heart, and desire
with all his soul to be baptized, but is debarred from it invincibly, we
do not, we dare not, pass sentence of condemnation upon him; not yet the
Roman Catholics themselves. The question then is, whether the want of
baptism, upon invincible necessity, do evermore infallibly exclude from
heaven.”[610] Singular struggle here, between the merciless ritual of
the priest, and the relenting spirit of the man!

The office of Communion contains even stronger marks of the same
sacerdotal superstitions: and notwithstanding the Protestant horror
entertained of the mass, approaches it so nearly, that no ingenuity can
exhibit them in contrast. Near doctrines, however, like near neighbours,
are known to quarrel most.

The idea of a physical sanctity, residing in solid and liquid
substances, is encouraged by this service. The priest _consecrates_ the
elements, by laying his hand upon all the bread, and upon every flagon
containing the wine about to be dispensed. If an additional quantity is
required, this too must be consecrated before its distribution. And the
sacredness thus imparted is represented as surviving the celebration of
the Supper, and residing in the substances as a permanent quality: for
in the disposal of the bread and wine that may remain at the close of
the sacramental feast, a distinction is made between the consecrated and
the unconsecrated portion of the elements; the former is not permitted
to quit the altar, but is to be reverently consumed by the priest and
the communicants; the latter is given to the curate. What the particular
change may be, which the prayer and manipulation of the minister are
thought to induce, it is by no means easy to determine; nor would the
discovery, perhaps, reward our pains. It is certainly conceived, that
they cease to be any longer mere bread and wine, and that with them
thenceforth co-exist, really and substantially, the body and blood of
Christ. Respecting this _Real Presence_ with the elements, there is no
dispute between the Romish and the English church; both unequivocally
maintain it: and the only question is, respecting the _Real Absence_ of
the original and culinary bread and wine: the Roman Catholic believing
that these substantially vanish, and are replaced by the body and blood
of Christ; the English Protestant conceiving that they remain, but are
united with the latter. The Lutheran, no less than the British Reformed
church, has clung tenaciously to the doctrine of the real presence in
the Eucharist. Luther himself declares, “I would rather retain with the
Romanists, _only_ the body and blood, than adopt, with the Swiss, the
bread and wine, _without_ the real body and blood of Christ.” The
catechism of our church affirms, that “the body and blood of Christ are
_verily and indeed_ taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s
Supper.” And this was not intended to be figuratively understood, of the
spiritual use and appropriation to which the faith and piety of the
receiver would mentally convert the elements: for although here the body
of Christ is only said to be “_taken_” (making it the _act of the
communicant_), yet one of the Articles speaks of it as “_given_” (making
it the _act of the officiating priest_), and implying the real presence
_before participation_. However anxious indeed the clergy of the
“Evangelical” school may be to disguise the fact, it cannot be doubted
that their church has always maintained a supernatural change in the
elements themselves, as well as in the mind of the receiver. Cosin,
Bishop of Durham, says, “We own the union between the body and blood of
Christ, and the elements, whose use and office we hold to be changed
from what it was before:” “we confess the necessity of a supernatural
and heavenly change, and that the signs cannot become sacraments but by
the infinite power of God.”[611]

In consistency with this preparatory change, a charmed efficacy is
attributed to the subsequent participation in the elements. Even the
_body_ of the communicant is said to be under their influence: “Grant us
to eat the flesh of thy dear Son, and drink his blood, that our sinful
_bodies_ may be made clean through his body, and our _souls_ washed
through his most precious blood:” and the unworthy recipients are said
“to provoke God to plague them with divers diseases and sundry kinds of
death.” Lest the worshipper, by presenting himself in an unqualified
state, should “do nothing else than increase his damnation,” the unquiet
conscience is directed to resort to the priest, and receive the benefit
of absolution before communicating. Can we deny to the Oxford divines
the merit (whatever it may be) of consistency with the theology of their
church, when they applaud and recommend, as they do, the administration
of the eucharist to infants, and to persons dying and insensible?
Indeed, it is difficult to discover, why infant Communion should be
thought more irrational than infant Baptism. If, as I have endeavoured
to show, the primary action of these ceremonies is conceived to be on
God, not on the mind of their object, why should not the Divine blessing
be induced upon the young and the unconscious, as well as on the mature
and capable soul? And were any further evidence required, than I have
hitherto adduced, to show _on whom_ the Communion is conceived to
operate in the first instance, it would surely be afforded by this
clause in the Service; by not partaking, “_Consider how great an injury
ye do unto God!_”

The only thing wanted to complete this sacerdotal system, is to obtain
for a certain class of men the corporate possession, and exclusive
administration, of these essential and holy mysteries. This our Church
accomplishes by its doctrine of Apostolical Succession; claiming for its
ministers a lineal official descent from the Apostles, which invests
them, and them alone within this realm, with divine authority to
pronounce absolution or excommunication, and to administer the
Sacraments. They are thus the sole guardians of the channels of the
Divine Spirit and its grace, and interpose themselves between a nation
and its God. “Receive the Holy Ghost,” says the Service for Ordination
of Priests, “for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God,
now committed unto thee by the imposition of hands. Whose sins thou dost
forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are
retained.” “They only,” says the present Bishop of Exeter, “can claim to
rule over the Lord’s household, whom he has himself placed over it; they
only are able to minister the means of grace,—above all, to present the
great commemorative _sacrifice_,—whom Christ has appointed, and whom he
has in all generations appointed in unbroken succession from those, and
through those, whom he first ordained. ‘Ambassadors from Christ’ must,
by the very force of the term, receive credentials from Christ:
‘stewards of the mysteries of God’ must be entrusted with those
mysteries by him. Remind your people, that in the Church only is the
promise of forgiveness of sins; and though, to all who truly repent, and
sincerely believe, Christ mercifully grants forgiveness; yet he has, in
an especial manner, empowered his ministers to declare and pronounce to
his people the absolution and remission of their sins: ‘whosesoever sins
ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain,
they are retained.’ This was the awful authority given to his first
ministers, and in them, and through them, to all their successors. This
is the awful authority we have received, and that we must never be
ashamed nor afraid to tell the people that we have received.

“Having shown to the people your commission, show to them how our own
Church has framed its services in accordance with that commission. Show
this to them not only in the Ordinal, but also in the Collects, in the
Communion Service, in the Office of the Visitation of the Sick; show it,
especially, in that which continually presents itself to their notice,
but is commonly little regarded by them; show it in the very
commencement of Morning and Evening Prayer, and make them understand the
full blessedness of that service, in which the Church thus calls on them
to join. Let them see that there the minister authoritatively pronounces
God’s pardon and absolution to all them that truly repent, and
unfeignedly believe Christ’s holy gospel; that he does this, even as the
Apostles did, with the authority and by the appointment of our Lord
himself, who, in commissioning his Apostles, gave this to be the
never-failing assurance of his co-operation in their ministry, ‘Lo, I am
with you always, even unto the end of the world;’ a promise which, of
its very nature, was not to be fulfilled to the persons of those whom he
addressed, but to their office, to their successors therefore in that
office, ‘even unto the end of the world.’ Lastly, remind and warn them
of the awful sanction with which our Lord accompanied his mission, even
of the second order of the ministers whom he appointed; ‘He that heareth
you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that
despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.’” That this high dignity may
be clearly understood to belong in this country only to the Church of
England, the Bishop proposes the question, “What, then, becomes of those
who are not, or continue not, members of that (visible) Church?” and
replies to it by saying, that though he “judges not them that are
without,” yet “he who wilfully and in despite of due warning, or through
recklessness and worldly-mindedness, sets at nought its ordinances, and
despises its ministers, has no right to promise to himself any share in
the grace which they are appointed to convey.”[612] “Why,” says one of
the Oxford divines, who here undeniably speaks the genuine doctrine of
his Church, “Why should we talk so much of an _Establishment_, and so
little of an APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION? Why should we not seriously endeavour
to impress our people with this plain truth, that by separating
themselves from our communion, they separate themselves not only from a
decent, orderly, useful society, but from THE ONLY CHURCH IN THIS REALM
WHICH HAS A RIGHT TO BE QUITE SURE THAT SHE HAS THE LORD’S BODY TO GIVE
TO HIS PEOPLE?”[613]

Of course this Divine authority has been received through the Church of
Rome, so abominable in the eyes of all Evangelical clergymen; and
through many an unworthy link in the unbroken chain. The Holy Spirit, it
is acknowledged, has _passed through_ many, on whom, apparently, it was
not pleased to _rest_; and the right to forgive sins been conferred by
those who seemed themselves to need forgiveness. A writer in the Oxford
Tracts observes, “Nor even though we may admit that many of those who
formed the connecting links of this holy chain were themselves unworthy
of the high charge reposed in them, can this furnish us with any solid
ground for doubting or denying their power to exercise that legitimate
authority with which they were duly invested, of transmitting the sacred
gift to worthier followers.”[614]

In its doctrine of Sacraments, then, and in that of Ecclesiastical
authority and succession, the Church of England is thoroughly imbued
with the sacerdotal character. It doubtless contains far better elements
and nobler conceptions than those which it has been my duty to exhibit
now; and solemnly insists on faith of heart, and truth of conscience,
and Christian devotedness of life, as well as on the observance of its
ritual; with the external it unites the internal condition of
sanctification. But insisting on the theory of a mystic efficacy in the
Christian rites, it necessarily fails to reconcile these with each
other: and hence the opposite parties within its pale; the one
magnifying faith and personal spirituality, the other exalting the
sacraments and ecclesiastical communion. They represent respectively the
two constituent and clashing powers, which met at the formation of the
English Church, and of which it effected the mere compromise, not the
reconciliation; I mean, the priestliness of Rome, and the prophetic
spirit of the Reformers. Never, since apostolic days, did heaven bless
us with truer prophet than Martin Luther. It was his mission (no modern
man had ever greater,) to substitute the idea of _personal faith_ for
that of _sacerdotal reliance_. And gloriously, with bravery and truth of
soul amid a thousand hindrances, did he achieve it. But though, ever
since, the priests have been down, and faith has been up, yet did the
hierarchy unavoidably remain, and insisted that _something_ should be
made of it, and at least some colourable terms proposed. Hence, every
reformed Church exhibits a coalition between the new and the old ideas:
and combined views of religion, which must ultimately prove incompatible
with each other; the formal with the spiritual; the idea of worship as a
means of propitiating God, with the conception of it as an expression of
love in man; the notion of Church authority with that of individual
freedom; the admission of a licence to think, with a prohibition of
thinking wrong. In our national Church, the old spirit was ascendant
over the new, though long forced into quiescence by the temper of modern
times. Now it is attempting to re-assert its power, not without
strenuous resistance. Indeed, the present age seems destined to end the
compromise between the two principles, from the union of which
Protestantism assumed its established forms. The truce seems everywhere
breaking up: a general disintegration of churches is visible; tradition
is ransacking the past for claims and dignities, and canvassing present
timidity for fresh authority, to withstand the wild forces born at the
Reformation, and hurrying us fast into an unknown future.

Let us now turn to the primitive Christianity; which, I submit, is
throughout wholly anti-sacerdotal.

Surely it must be admitted that the general spirit of our Lord’s
personal life and ministry was that of the Prophet, not of the Priest;
tending directly to the disparagement of whatever priesthood existed in
his country, without visibly preparing the substitution of anything at
all analogous to it. The sacerdotal order felt it so; and with the
infallible instinct of self-preservation, they watched, they hated, they
seized, they murdered him. The priest in every age has a natural
antipathy to the prophet, dreads him as kings dread revolution, and is
the first to detect his existence. The solemn moment and the gracious
words, of Christ’s first preaching in Nazareth, struck with fate the
temple in Jerusalem. To the old men of the village, to the neighbours
who knew his childhood, and companions who had shared its rambles and
its sports, he said, with the quiet flush of inspiration; “The Spirit of
the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to
the poor: he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to
set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of
the Lord.”[615] The Spirit of the Lord in Galilee! speaking with the
peasantry, dwelling in villages, and wandering loose and where it
listeth among the hills! This would never do, thought the white-robed
Levites of the Holy City; it would be as a train of wild-fire in the
Temple. And were they not right? When it was revealed that sanctity is
no thing of place and time, that a way is open from earth to heaven,
from every field or mountain trod by human feet, and through every roof
that shelters a human head; that amid the crowd and crush of life, each
soul is in personal solitude with God, and by speech or silence (be they
but true and loving) may tell its cares and find its peace; that a
divine allegiance might _cost nothing_, but the strife of a dutiful will
and the patience of a filial heart; how could any priesthood hope to
stand? See how Jesus himself, when the Temple was close at hand, and the
sunshine dressed it in its splendour, yet withdrew his prayers to the
midnight of Mount Olivet, He entered those courts to teach, rather than
to worship; and when there, he is felt to take no consecration, but to
give it; to bring with him the living spirit of God, and spread it
throughout all the place. When evening closes his teachings, and he
returns late over the Mount to Bethany, did he not feel that there was
more of God in the night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above him,
and the sad love within him, than in the place called “Holy” which he
had left? And when he had knocked at the gate of Lazarus the risen and
become his guest; when, after the labours of the day, he unburthened his
spirit to the affections of that family, and spake of things divine to
the sisters listening at his feet; did they not feel, as they retired at
length, that the whole house was full of God, and that there is no
sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within us all? In
childhood, he had once preferred the temple and its teachings to his
parents’ home: now, to his deeper experience, the temple has lost its
truth; while the cottage and the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices and
constant duties of this life, seem covered with the purest consecration.
True, he vindicated the sanctity of the temple, when he heard within its
enclosure the hum of traffic and the chink of gain, and would not have
the house of prayer turned into a place of merchandise: because in this
there was imposture and a lie, and Mammon and the Lord must ever dwell
apart. In nothing must there be mockery and falsehood; and while the
temple stands, it must be a temple true.

Our Lord’s whole ministry then (to which we may add that of his
apostles) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite to that of
priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed locality, without form,
without rites; with teaching free, occasional and various, with
sympathies ever with the people, and a strain of speech never marked by
invective, except against the ruling sacerdotal influence;—all these
characters proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet of the
Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his enemies, the
_word_ “PRIEST” (ἱερεὺς) never occurs in either the historical or
epistolary writings of the New Testament, except in the Epistle to the
Hebrews. And _there_ its application is not a little remarkable. It is
applied to Christ alone: it is declared to belong to him, only after his
ascension: it is said that, while on earth, he neither was, nor could
be, a priest: and if it is admitted that he holds the office in heaven,
this is only to satisfy the demand of the Hebrew Christians for some
sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to reconcile them to having no
priest on earth. The writer acknowledges one great pontiff in the world
above, that the whole race may be superseded in the world below; and
banishes priesthood into invisibility, that men may never see its shadow
more. All the terms of office which are given to the first preachers of
the gospel and superintendents of churches—as Deacon, Elder or
Presbyter, Overseer or Bishop, are _Lay-terms_, belonging previously,
not to ecclesiastical, but to civil life; an indication, surely, that no
analogy was thought to exist between the Apostolic and the Sacerdotal
relations.[616] I shall, no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which
our Lord is supposed to have given their commission to his first
representatives; “Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven;”[617] and
shall be asked whether this does not convey to them and their successors
an official authority to forgive sins, and dispense the decrees of the
unseen world. I reply briefly:

1st, That the power here granted does not relate to the dispensations of
the future life, but solely to what would be termed, in modern language,
the allotment of _church-membership_. The previous verse proves this,
furnishing as it does a particular case of the general authority here
assigned. It directs the apostles under what circumstances they are to
remove an offender from a Christian society, and treat him as an
unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican. Having given them
their rule, he freely trusts the application of it to them: and being
about to retire ere long, from personal intervention in the affairs of
his kingdom, he assures them that their decisions shall be his, and that
he may be considered as adopting in heaven their determinations upon
earth. He simply “consigns to his apostles discretionary power to direct
the affairs of his church, and superintend the diffusion of the glad
tidings: they may bind and loose, that is, open and shut the door of
admission to their community, as their judgment may determine; employing
or rejecting applicants for the missionary office; dissociating from
their assemblies obstinate delinquents; receiving with openness, or
dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, according to
their estimate of his qualifications and motives.”

2ndly, It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any one
being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the persons immediately
addressed. Not a word is said of any official successor or any distant
age. No indication is afforded, that any idea of futurity was present to
the mind of Jesus: and a title of perpetual office, an instrument
creating and endowing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be admitted,
to be somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power has been
successfully claimed, the title is seldom difficult to prove.

The alleged RITUAL of Christianity, consisting of the sacraments of
Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less destitute of sanction
from the Scriptures. The former we shall see reason to regard as simply
an initiatory form, applicable only to Christian converts, and limited
therefore to adults; the latter as purely a commemoration: neither
therefore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy.

For baptism it is impossible to establish any supernatural origin. It is
admitted to have existed before the Christian æra; and to have been
employed by the Jews on the admission of proselytes to their religion.
It is certain that it is not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic
dispensation; and though prevalent before the period of the New
Testament, is nowhere enforced or recognised in the writings of the Old.
It arose therefore in the interval between the only two systems which
Christians acknowledged to be supernatural: and must be considered as of
natural and human origin, invested, thus far, with no higher authority
than its own appropriateness may confer. There seem to have been two
modes of construing the symbol: the one founded on the cleansing effect
of the water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on the
appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the eye of a
spectator. The former was an image of the Heathen convert’s purification
from a foul idolatry; and his transition to a stainless condition under
a divine and justifying law. The latter represented him, when he
vanished in the stream, as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its
sight; and when he re-appeared, as emerging or born again to a better
state; the “old man” was “buried in baptism,” and when he “rose again,”
he had altogether “become new.”[618] The ceremony then was appropriately
used in any case of transition from a depressed and corrupt state of
existence to a hopeful and blessed one; from a false or imperfect
religion to one true and heavenly.

But it will be said, whatever the origin of Baptism, it was employed and
sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned his apostles to go and baptize
all nations. True; but is there no difference between the adoption of a
practice already extant,—of a practice which was as much the mere
institutional dress of the apostles’ nation, as the sandals whose dust
they were to shake off against the faithless, were the customary
clothing of the apostles’ feet,—and the authoritative appointment of a
Sacrament? They were going forth to make converts: and why should they
not have recourse to the form familiarly associated with the act?
Familiar association recommended its adoption in that age and clime; and
the absence of such association elsewhere and in other times may be
thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony thus taken up
must be presumed to retain its acquired sense and its established extent
of application: and if so, baptism must be strictly limited to the
admission of proselytes from other faiths. This accords with the known
practice of the apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but
those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries, persuaded to
become Christians. Not a single case of the use of the rite with
children can be adduced from Scripture: and the only argument by which
such employment of it is ever justified is this; that a _household_ is
said to have been baptized, and _all nations_ were to receive the offer
of it; and that the household _may_, the nations _must_, have contained
children. It is evident that such reasoning could never have been
propounded, unless the practice had existed first, and the defence had
been found afterwards.

With the system of infant baptism, vanish almost all the ideas which the
prevalent theology has put into the rite; and it becomes as intelligible
and expressive to one who believes in the good capacities of human
nature, as to those who esteem it originally depraved. ‘How unmeaning,’
say our orthodox opponents, ‘is this ceremony in Unitarian hands;
denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents! of what
regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if not of the
washing away of that _hereditary sin_, which they refuse to acknowledge?
for when the infant is brought to the font, he can as yet have no other
guilt than this.’ I reply; the objection has no force except against the
use of _infant_ baptism in our churches,—which I am not anxious to
defend: but of course those Unitarians who employ it, conceive it to be
the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of truths and
feelings which they hold dear. For myself, I believe, with our
opponents, that the _doctrine_ of original sin and the _practice_ of
infant baptism _do_ belong to each other, and must stand or fall
together: and therefore deem it a fact very significant of the apostles’
theology, that no infant can be shown ever to have been “brought to the
font” by these first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the
_new-birth_ which baptism (i.e. recent and genuine discipleship to
Jesus) may give to the _maturely-convinced_ Christian, he must have a
great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew conceptions and language in
relation to the Messiah, but of the spirituality of the gospel, and of
the fresh creations of character which it calls up, who can be much
puzzled about its meaning.

In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with mystic power; but
an initiatory form, possibly of consuetudinary obligation only; but if
enjoined, applicable exclusively to proselytes, and misemployed in the
case of infants; a sign of conversion, not a means of salvation;
confided to no sacerdotal order, but open to every man fitted to give it
an appropriate use.

I turn to the Lord’s Supper; with design to show, what it is not, and
what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament, any more than it is an
expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us that it has a ritual character, we
are first assured that it is clearly the successor in the Gospel to the
Passover under the Law. Well,—even if it were so, it would still be
simply commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a festival,
filled with great remembrances, and inspired with religious joy. Such
was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem;—the annual gathering of families and
kindred, a sacred carnival under the spring sky and in sight of unreaped
fields, when the memory was recalled of national deliverance, and the
tale was told of traditional glories, and the thoughts brought back of
bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage ended, of the promised land
possessed. The Jewish festival was no more than this; unless, with
Archbishop Magee and others, we erroneously conceive it to be a proper
sacrifice.[619] So that those who would interpret the Lord’s Supper by
the Passover have their choice between two views: that it is a simple
commemoration; or that it is an expiatory sacrifice: in the former case,
they quit the Church of England; in the latter, they fall into the
Church of Rome.

But, in truth, there is no propriety in applying the name ‘Christian
passover’ to the Communion. The notion rests entirely on this
circumstance; that the first three Evangelists describe the last Supper
as the Paschal Supper. But the _institutional_ part of that meal was
over before the cup was distributed, and the repetition of the act
enjoined. Nor is there the slightest trace, either in the subsequent
scriptures, or in the earliest history of the Church, that the Communion
was thought to bear relation to the passover. The time, the frequency,
the mode, of the two were altogether different. Indeed, when we observe
that not one of these particulars is prescribed and determined by our
Lord at all, when we notice the slight and transient manner in which he
drops his wish that they would “do this in remembrance of” him, when we
compare these features of the account with the elaborate precision of
Moses respecting hours, and materials, and dates, and places, and modes
in the establishment of the Hebrew festivals, it is scarcely possible to
avoid the impression, that we are reading narrative, not law; an
utterance of personal affection, rather than the legislative enactment
of an everlasting institution.[620] However this may be, no importance
can be attached to the reported coincidence in the time of that meal
with the day of passover: for the apostle John, who gives by far the
fullest account of what happened at that table (yet never mentions the
institution of the supper), states that this was not the paschal meal at
all, which did not occur, he says, till the following day of
crucifixion.[621]

‘But,’ it will be said, ‘the gospels are not the only parts of
Scripture, whence the nature of the eucharist may be learned. Language
is employed by St. Paul in reference to it, which cannot be understood
of a mere memorial, and implies that awful consequences hung on the
worthy or unworthy participation in the rite. Does he not even say, that
a man may “eat and drink damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s
body?”’

The passage whence these words are cited certainly throws great light on
the institution of which we treat: but there must be a total disregard
to the whole context and the general course of the apostle’s reasoning
before it can be made to yield any argument for the mystical character
of the rite.[622] It would appear that the Corinthian church was in the
habit of celebrating the Lord’s Supper in a way which, even if it had
never been disgraced by any indecorum, must have struck a modern
Christian with wonder at its singularity. The members met together in
one room or church, each bringing his own supper, of such quantity and
quality as his opulence or poverty might allow. To this the apostle does
not object, but apparently considers it a part of the established
arrangement. But these Christians were divided into factions, and had
not learned the true uniting spirit of their faith: nor do they seem to
have acquired that sobriety of habit and sanctity of mind, which their
profession ought to have induced. When they entered the place of
meeting, they broke up into groups and parties, class apart from class,
and rich deserting poor: each set began its separate meal, some
indulging in luxury and excess, others with scarce the means of keeping
the commemoration at all; and, infamous to tell, the blessed supper of
the Lord was sunk into a tavern meal. So gross and habitual had the
abuse become, that the excesses had affected the health and life of
these guilty and unworthy partakers. They had made no distinction
between the Communion and an ordinary repast, had lost all perception of
the memorial significance of their meeting, had not discriminated or
“discerned the Lord’s body:” and so they had eaten and drunk judgment
(improperly rendered “_damnation_” in the English Version) to
themselves; and many were weak and sickly among them, and many even
slept. Well would it be, if they would look on this as a chastening of
the Lord: in which case they might take warning, and escape being cast
out of the church, and driven to take their chance with the unbelieving
and heathen world. “When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord,
that we should not be condemned with the world.”

In order to remedy all this corruption, St. Paul reminds them, that to
eat and drink under the same roof, in the church, does not constitute
proper Communion: that, to this end, they must not break up into
sections, and retain their property in the food, but all participate
seriously together. He directs that an absolute separation shall be made
between the occasions for satisfying hunger and thirst, and those for
observing this commemorative rite, discriminating carefully the memorial
of the Lord’s body from every thing else. He refers them all to the
original model of the institution, the parting meal of Christ, before
his betrayal; and by this example, as a criterion, he would have every
man examine himself, and after that pattern eat of the bread and drink
of the cup. Hence it appears,

That the unworthy partaker was the riotous Corinthian, who made no
distinction between the sacred Communion and a vulgar meal:

That the judgment or damnation which such brought on themselves, was
sickliness, weakness, and premature but natural death:

That the self-examination which the apostle recommends to the
communicant is, a comparison of his mode of keeping the rite, with the
original model of the Last Supper:

That in the Corinthian Church there was no Priest, or officiating
dispenser of the elements: and that St. Paul did not contemplate or
recommend the appointment of any such person.

The Lord’s Supper, then, I conclude, was and is a simple commemoration.
Am I asked, ‘_of what?_ Why, according to Unitarian views, the death on
the cross merits the memorial, more than the remaining features of our
Lord’s history,—more even than the death of many a noble martyr, who has
sealed his testimony to truth by like self-sacrifice?’ The answer will
be found at length in the Lecture on the Atonement, where the Scriptural
conceptions of Christ’s death are expounded in detail. Meanwhile, it is
sufficient to recal an idea, which has more than once been thrown out
during this course: that if Jesus had taken up his Messianic power
without death, he would have remained a Hebrew, and been limited to the
people amid whom he was born. He quitted his mortal personality, he left
this fleshly tabernacle of existence, and became immortal, that his
nationality might be destroyed, and all men drawn in as subjects of his
reign. It was the cross that opened to the nations the blessed ways of
life, and put us all in relations not of law, but of love, to him and
God. Hence the memorial of his death celebrates the universality and
spirituality of the gospel; declares the brotherhood of men, the
fatherhood of providence, the personal affinity of every soul with God.
That is no empty rite, which overflows with these conceptions.

Christianity, then, I maintain, is without Priest, and without Ritual.
It altogether coalesces with the prophetic idea of religion, and
repudiates the sacerdotal. Christ himself was transcendently THE
PROPHET. He brought down God to this our life, and left his spirit amid
its scenes. The Apostles were prophets; they carried that spirit abroad,
revealing everywhere to men the sanctity of their nature, and the
proximity of their heaven. Nor am I even unwilling to admit an Apostolic
succession, never yet extinct, and never more to be extinguished. But
then it is by no means a rectilinear regiment of incessant priests; but
a broken, scattered, yet glorious race of prophets; the genealogy of
great and Christian souls, through whom the primitive conceptions of
Jesus have propagated themselves from age to age; mind producing mind,
courage giving birth to courage, truth developing truth, and love ever
nurturing love, so long as one good and noble spirit shall act upon
another. Luther surely was the child of Paul: and what a noble offspring
has risen to manhood from Luther’s soul; whom to enumerate, were to tell
the best triumphs of the modern world. These are Christ’s true
ambassadors; and never did he mean any follower of his to be called a
priest. He has his genuine messenger, wherever, in the Church or in the
world, there toils any one of the real prophets of our race; any one who
can create the good and great in other souls, whether by truth of word
or deed, by the inspiration of genuine speech, or the better power of a
life merciful and holy.

* * * * *

And here, my friends, with my subject might my Lecture close; were it
not that we are assembled now to terminate this controversy: and that a
few remarks in reference to its whole course and spirit seem to be
required.

That the recent aggression upon the principles of Unitarian
Christianity, was prompted by no unworthy motive, individual or
political, but by a zeal, Christian so far as its spirit is
disinterested, and unchristian only so far as it is exclusive, has never
been doubted or denied by my brother ministers or myself. That much
personal consideration and courtesy have been evinced towards us during
the controversy, it is so grateful to us to acknowledge, that we must
only regret the theological obstructions in the way of that mutual
knowledge, which softens the prejudices, and corrects the errors of the
closet. From such errors, the lot of our fallible nature, we are deeply
aware that we cannot be exempt, and profoundly wish that, by others’ aid
or by our own, we could discover them. Meanwhile, we do not feel that
our opponents have been successful in the offer which they have made, of
help towards this end. They are too little acquainted with our history
and character, and have far too great a horror of us, to succeed in a
design, demanding rather the benevolence of sympathy and trust, than
that of antipathy and fear. Hence have arisen certain complaints and
charges against our system and its tendencies, which, having been
reiterated again and again in the Christ Church Lectures, and scarcely
noticed in our own, claim a concluding observation or two now.

1. We are said to be infidels in disguise, and our system to be drifting
fast towards utter unbelief. At all events, it is said we make great
advances that way.

It is by no means unusual to dismiss this charge on a whirlwind of
declamation, designed to send it and the infidel to the greatest
possible distance. My friend who delivered the first Lecture, noticed it
in a far different spirit; and in a discussion where truth and wisdom
had any chance, his reply would have prevented any recurrence to the
statement. Let me try to imitate him in the testimony which I desire to
add upon this point.

Every one, I presume, who disbelieves _any thing_, is, with respect to
that thing, _an infidel_. Departure from any prevalent and established
ideas, is inevitably an approach to infidelity; the extent of the
departure, not the reasonableness or propriety of it, is the sole
measure of the nearness of that approach; which, however wise and sober,
when estimated by a true and independent criterion, will appear, to
persons strongly possessed by the ascendant notions, nothing less than
alarming, amazing, awful. In short, the average popular creed of the
day, is the mental standard, from which the stadia are measured off
towards that invisible, remote, nay, even imaginary place, lodged
somewhere within chaos, called utter unbelief. Christianity at first was
blank infidelity: and disciples, being of course the atheists of their
day, were thought a fit prey for the wild beasts of the amphitheatre.
Every rejection of tradition, again, is unbelief with respect to it; and
to those who hold its authority, it is the denial of an essential. It is
too evident to need proof, that the average popular belief cannot be
assumed, by any considerate person, as a standard of truth. To make it
an objection against any class of men, that they depart from it, is to
prove no error against them; and no one, who is not willing to call in
the passions of the multitude in suffrage on the controversies of the
few, will condescend to enforce the charge.

But only observe how, in the present instance, the matter stands. In the
popular religion we discern, mixed up together, two constituent
portions; certain _peculiar_ doctrines which characterize the common
orthodoxy; and certain _universal_ Christian truths remaining, when
these are subtracted. The infidel throws away both of these; we throw
away the former only: and thus far, no doubt, we partially agree with
him. But _on what grounds_ do we severally justify this rejection? In
answer to this question, compare the views, with respect both to the
_authority_ and to the _interpretation_ of Scripture, held by the three
parties, the Trinitarian, the Unbeliever, the Unitarian. The Unbeliever
does not usually find fault with the orthodox _interpretation_ of the
Bible, but allows it to pass, as probably the real meaning of the book,
only he altogether denies the divine character and authority of the
whole religion; he therefore _agrees_ with the Trinitarian respecting
interpretation, disagrees with him respecting _authority_. The
Unitarian, again, admits the divine character of Christianity, but
understands it differently from the Trinitarian; he therefore reverses
the former case, _agrees_ with the orthodox on the authority,
_disagrees_ respecting interpretation. It follows, that with the
unbeliever he agrees _in neither_, and is therefore further from him
than his Trinitarian accuser.

I have given this explanation, from regard simply to logical truth. I
have no desire to join in the outcry against even the deliberate
unbeliever in the Gospel, as if he must necessarily be a fiend.
Profoundly loving and trusting Christianity myself, I yet feel indignant
at the persecution which theology, policy, and law inflict on the many
who, with undeniable exercise of conscientiousness and patience of
research, are yet unable to satisfy themselves respecting its evidence.
The very word ‘_infidel_,’ implying not simply an intellectual judgment,
but bad moral qualities, conveys an unmerited insult, and ought to be
repudiated by every generous disputant. The more deeply we trust
Christianity, the more should we protest against its being defended by a
body-guard of passions, willing to do for it precisely the services
which they might equally render to the vulgarest imposture.

2. We were recently accused, amid acknowledgments of our _honesty_, with
want of _anxiety_ about spiritual truth: and the following justification
of the charge was offered: “The Word of God has informed us, that they
who seek the truth shall find it; that they who ask for holy wisdom
shall receive it; but it must be a _really anxious inquiry_—a heart-felt
desire for the blessing. ‘If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest
for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the
Lord, and find the knowledge of God.’[623] Such promises are
express,—they cannot be broken,—God will give the blessing to the
_sincere_, _anxious_ inquirer. But the two qualities must go together. A
man may be sincere in his ignorance and spiritual torpor; but let the
full desire for God’s favour, his pardoning mercy, and his enlightening
grace spring up in the heart, and we may rest assured that the desire
will soon be accomplished. Admitting, then, the sincerity of Unitarians,
we doubt their anxiety, for we are well persuaded from God’s promises,
that if they possessed both, they would be delivered from their
miserable system, and be brought to the knowledge of the truth.”[624]

The praise of our “_sincerity_,” conveyed in these bland sentences, we
are anxious to decline: not that we undervalue the quality: but because
we find, on near inspection, that it has all been emptied out of the
word before its presentation, and the term comes to us hollow and
worthless. It affords a specimen of the mode in which alone our
opponents appear able to give any credit to heretics: many phrases of
approbation they freely apply to us; but they take care to draw off the
whole meaning first. We must reject these “Greek presents:” and we are
concerned that any Christian divine can so torture and desecrate the
names of virtue, as to make them instruments of disparagement and
injury. This play with words, which every conscience should hold sacred,
and every lip pronounce with reverence,—this careless and unmeaning
application of them in discourse,—indicates a loose adhesion to the mind
of the ideas denoted by them, which we regard with unfeigned
astonishment and grief. What, let me ask, can be the “_sincerity_” of an
inquirer, who is not “_anxious_” _about the truth_? How can _he_ be
“_sincerely_” persuaded that he sees, who voluntarily shuts his eyes?
Unless this word is to be degraded into a synonyme for indolence and
self-complacency, no professed seeker of truth must have the praise of
sincerity, who does not abandon all worship of his own state of mind as
already perfect, who is not ready to listen to every calm doubt as to
the voice of heaven,—to undertake with gratitude the labour of reaching
new knowledge,—to maintain his faith and his profession in scrupulous
accordance with his perception of evidence; and, at any moment of
awakening, to spring from his most brilliant dreams into God’s own
morning light, with a matin hymn upon his lips for his new-birth from
darkness and from sleep. The earnestness implied in this state of mind
is perhaps not precisely the same, as that with which our Trinitarian
opponents seem to be familiar. The “anxiety” which they appear to feel
for themselves is, to keep their existing state of belief: the “anxiety”
which they feel for us is, that we should have it. We are to hold
ourselves ready for a change; they are not to be expected to desire it.
If a doubt of _our opinions_ should occur _to us_, we are to foster it
carefully, and follow it out as a beckoning of the Holy Spirit: if a
doubt of _their sentiments_ should occur _to them_, they are to crush it
on the spot, as a reptile-thought sent of Satan to tempt them. “Our
aim,” says the concluding Lecturer again, “has been to beget a deep
spirit of inquiry:”[625] and so has ours, I would reply: only you and we
have severally prosecuted this aim in different ways. We have personally
listened, and personally inquired, and earnestly recommended all whom
our influence could reach, to do the same: and few indeed will be the
Unitarian libraries containing one of these series of lectures, that
will not exhibit the other by its side. You have entered this
controversy, evidently strange to our literature and history; and any
deficiency in such reading before, has not been compensated by anxiety
to listen now. Your people have been warned against us, and are taught
to regard the study of our publications as blasphemy at second-hand: and
were they really so simple as to act upon your avowed wish “to beget a
deep spirit of inquiry,” and plunge into the investigation of Unitarian
authors, and judge for themselves of Unitarian worship, they would
speedily hear the word of recal, and discover that they were practically
disappointing the whole object of this controversy.

Having said thus much respecting the unmeaning use of language in the
Lecturer’s disparaging estimate of Unitarian “anxiety,” we may
profitably direct a moment’s attention to the _reasoning_ which it
involves. It presents us with the standing fallacy of intolerance, which
is sufficiently rebuked by being simply exhibited. Our opponents reason
thus:

God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err:
The Unitarians _do_ fatally err:
Therefore, The Unitarians are not really anxious.

Now it is clear that we must conceive our opponents to be no less
mistaken than they suppose us to be. They are as far from us, as we from
them; and from either point, taken as a standard, the measure of error
must be the same. Moreover, we cannot but eagerly assent to the
principle of the Lecturer’s first premiss, that God will never let the
truly anxious fatally miss their way. So that there is nothing, in the
nature of the case, to prevent our turning this same syllogism, with a
change in the names of the parties, against our opponents. Yet we should
shrink, with severe self-reproach, from drawing any such unfavourable
conclusion respecting them, as they deduce of us. Accordingly, we manage
our reasoning thus:

God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err:
The Trinitarians show themselves to be really anxious:
Therefore, The Trinitarians do not fatally err.

Our opponents are more sure that their judgment is in the right, than
that their neighbours’ conscience is in earnest. They sacrifice other
men’s characters to their own self-confidence: we would rather distrust
our self-confidence, and rely on the visible signs of a good and careful
mind. We honour other men’s hearts, rather than our own heads. How can
it be just, to make the agreement between an opponent’s opinion and our
own, the criterion of his proper conduct of the inquiry? Every man feels
the injury, the moment the rule is turned against himself: and every
good man should be ashamed to direct it against his brother.

3. Our reverend opponents affect to have laboured under a great
disadvantage, from the absence of any recognized standard of Unitarian
belief. ‘We give you,’ they say, ‘our Articles and Creeds, which we
unanimously undertake to defend, and which expose a definite object to
all heretical attacks. In return, you can furnish us with no authorised
exposition of your system; but leave us to gather our knowledge of it
from individual writers, for whose opinions you refuse to be
responsible, and whose reasonings, when refuted by us, you can
conveniently disown.’

Plausible as this complaint may appear, I venture to affirm, that it is
vastly easier to ascertain the common belief of Unitarians, than that of
the members of the Established Church: and for this plain reason, that
with us there really is such a thing as a common faith, though defined
in no confession; in the Anglican Church there is not, though articles
and creeds profess it. The characteristic tenets of Unitarian
Christianity are so simple and unambiguous, that little scope exists for
variety in their interpretation: to the propositions expressing them all
their professors attach _distinct and the same_ ideas;—so far, at least,
as such accordance is possible in relation to subjects inaccessible both
to demonstration and to experience. But the Trinitarian hypothesis,
venturing with presumptuous analysis far into the Divine psychology,
presents us with ideas confessedly inapprehensible; propounded in
language which, if used in its ordinary sense, is self-contradictory,
and if not, is unmeaning, and ready in its emptiness to be filled by any
arbitrary interpretation;—and actually understood so variously by those
who subscribe to them, that the Calvinist and the Arminian, the
Tritheist and the Sabellian, unite to praise them. Indeed, in the
history of the English Church, so visible is the sweep of the centre of
orthodoxy over the whole space from the confines of Romanism to the
verge of Unitarianism, that our ecclesiastical chronology is measured by
its oscillations. Our respected opponents know full well, that it is not
necessary to search beyond the clergy of this town, or even beyond the
morning and afternoon preaching in one and the same church, in order to
encounter greater contrasts in theology, than could be found in a whole
library of Unitarian divinity. What mockery then to refer us to these
articles as expositions of clerical belief, when the moment we pass
beyond the words, and address ourselves to the sense, every shade of
contrariety appears: and no one definite conception can be adopted of
such a doctrine as that of the Trinity, without some church expositor or
other starting up to rebuke it as a misrepresentation! How poor the
pride of uniformity, which contents itself with lip-service to the
symbol, in the midst of heart-burnings about the reality!

In order to test the force of the objection to which I am referring, let
us advert, in detail, to the topics which exhibit the Unitarian and
Trinitarian theology in most direct opposition. It will appear that the
advantage of unity lies, in this instance, on the side of heresy; and
that if multiformity be a prime characteristic of error, there is a wide
difference between orthodoxy and truth. There are four great subjects
comprised in the controversy between the church and ourselves: the
nature of God; of Christ; of sin; of punishment. On these several points
(which, considered as involving on our part denials of previous ideas,
may be regarded as containing the _negative_ elements of our belief) all
our modern writers, without material variation or exception, maintain
the following doctrines:

UNITARIAN DOCTRINES, _opposed to_ CHURCH DOCTRINES.

(1.) The Personal Unity of God. (1.) The Trinity in Unity.

(2.) The Simplicity of Nature in (2.) Two distinct Natures in
Christ. Christ.

(3.) The Personal Origin and (3.) The Transferable Nature and
Identity of Sin. Vicarious Removal of Sin.

(4.) The Finite Duration of (4.) The Eternity of Hell
Future Suffering. Torments.

Now no one at all familiar with polemical literature can deny, that the
modes and ambiguities of doctrine comprised in this Trinitarian list,
are more numerous than can be detected in the parallel “heresies.” I am
willing indeed to admit an exception in respect to the last of the
topics, and to allow that the belief in the finite duration of future
punishment has opposed itself, in two forms, to the single doctrine of
everlasting torments. But when the systems are compared at their other
corresponding points, the boast of orthodox uniformity instantly
vanishes. Since the primitive jealousy between the Jewish and Gentile
Christianity, the rivalry between the “Monarchy” and the “Economy,” the
believers in the personal Unity of God, though often severed by ages
from each other, have held that majestic truth in one unvaried form.
Never was there an idea so often lost and recovered, yet so absolutely
unchanged: a sublime, but occasional visitant of the human mind,
assuring us of the perpetual oneness of our own nature, as well as the
Divine. We can point to no unbroken continuity of our great doctrine:
and if we could, we should appeal with no confidence to the evidence of
so dubious a phenomenon; for if a system of ideas once gains possession
of society, and attracts to itself complicated interests and feelings,
many causes may suffice to ensure its indefinite preservation. But we
can point to a greater phenomenon; to the long and repeated extinction
of our favourite belief, to its submersion beneath a dark and restless
fanaticism; and its invariable resurrection, like a necessary intuition
of the soul, in times of purer light, with its features still the same;
stamped with imperishable identity of truth, and, like him to whom it
refers, without variableness or shadow of a turning. Meanwhile, who will
undertake to enumerate and define the succession of Trinities by which
this doctrine has been bewildered and banished? Passing by the
Aristotelian, the Platonic, the Ciceronian, the Cartesian
Trinity,—quitting the stormy disputes, and contradictory decisions of
the early councils, shall we find among even the modern fathers of our
national church, any approach to unanimity? Am I to be content with the
doctrine of Bishop Bull, and subordinate the Son to the Father as the
sole fountain of divinity? Or must I rise to the Tritheism of Waterland
and Sherlock? or, accepting the famous decision of the University of
Oxford, descend with Archbishop Whately, to the modal Trinity of South
and Wallis? Are we to understand the phrase, three persons, to mean
three beings united by “perichoresis,” three “mutual inexistences,”
three “modes,” three “differences,” three “contemplations,” or three
“somewhats;” or, being told that this is but a vain prying into a
mystery, shall we be satisfied to leave the phrase without idea at all?
It is to the last degree astonishing to hear from Trinitarian divines,
the praises of uniformity of belief; seeing that it is one of the chief
labours of ecclesiastical history to record the incessant effort, vain
to the present day, to give some stability of meaning to the fundamental
doctrines of their faith.

The same remark applies, with little modification, to the opposite views
respecting the person of the Saviour. It is true that Unitarians, agreed
respecting the singleness of nature in Christ, differ respecting the
natural rank of that nature, whether his soul were human or angelic.
But, for this solitary variety among these heretics, how many doctrines
of the Logos and the Incarnation does orthodox literature contain? Can
any one affirm, that when the council of Ephesus had arbitrated between
the Eutychian doctrine of absorption, and the Nestorian doctrine of
separation, all doubt and ambiguity was removed by the magic phrase
“Hypostatic union?” Since the monophysite contest was at its height, has
the Virgin Mary been left in undisputed possession of her title as
“Mother of God?” Has the Eternal Generation of the Son encountered no
orthodox suspicions, and the Indwelling scheme received no orthodox
support? And if we ask these questions: “What respectively happened to
the two natures on the cross? what has become of Christ’s human soul
now? is it separate from the Godhead like any other immortal spirit, or
is it added to the Deity, so as to introduce into his nature a new and
fourth element?” shall we receive from the many voices of the church but
one accordant answer? Nay, do the authors of this controversy suppose
that, during its short continuance, they have been able to maintain
their unanimity? If they do, I believe that any reader who thinks it
worth while to register the varieties of error, would be able to
undeceive them. If the diversities of doctrine cannot easily and often
be shown to amount to palpable inconsistencies, this must be ascribed, I
believe, to the mystic and technical phraseology, the substitute rather
than the expression for precise ideas,—which has become the vernacular
dialect of orthodox divinity. The jargon of theology affords a field too
barren, to bear so vigorous a weed as an undisputed contradiction.

It is needless to dwell on the numerous forms under which the doctrine
of atonement has been held by those who subscribe the articles of our
national church: while its Unitarian opponents have taken their fixed
station on the personal character and untransferable nature of sin. One
writer tells us that only the human nature perished on the cross;
another that God himself expired: some say, that Christ suffered no more
intensely, but only more “meritoriously,” than many a martyr; others,
that he endured the whole quantity of torment due to the wicked whom he
redeemed: some, that it is the spotlessness of his manhood that is
imputed to believers; others, that it is the holiness of his Deity. From
the high doctrine of satisfaction to the very verge of Unitarian heresy,
every variety of interpretation has been given to the language of the
established formularies respecting Christian redemption. Nor is it yet
determined whether, in the lottery of opinion, the name of Owen, Sykes,
or Magee, shall be drawn for the prize of orthodoxy.

And if from those parts of our belief, to which the accidents of their
historical origin have given a _negative_ character, we turn to those
which are _positive_, not the slightest reason will appear for charging
them with uncertainty and fluctuation. All Unitarian writers maintain
the Moral Perfection and Fatherly Providence of the Infinite Ruler; the
Messiahship of Jesus Christ, in whose person and spirit there is a
Revelation of God and a Sanctification for Man; the Responsibility and
Retributive Immortality of men; and the need of a pure and devout heart
of Faith, as the source of all outward goodness and inward communion
with God. These great and self-luminous points, bound together by
natural affinity, constitute the fixed centre of our religion. And on
subjects beyond this centre, we have no wider divergences than are found
among those who attach themselves to an opposite system. For example,
the relations between Scripture and Reason, as evidences and guides in
questions of doctrine, are not more unsettled among us, than are the
relations between Scripture and Tradition in the Church. Nor is the
perpetual authority of the “Christian rites” so much in debate among our
ministers, as the efficacy of the Sacraments among the clergy. In truth,
our diversities of sentiment affect far less _what_ we believe, than the
question _why_ we believe it. Different modes of reasoning, and
different results of interpretation, are no doubt to be found among our
several authors. We all make our appeal to the records of Christianity:
but we have voted no particular commentator into the seat of authority.
And is not this equally true of our opponents’ church? Their articles
and creeds furnish no textual expositions of Scripture, but only results
and deductions from its study. And so variously have these results been
elicited from the sacred writings, that scarcely a text can be adduced
in defence of the Trinitarian scheme, which some witness unexceptionably
orthodox may not be summoned to prove inapplicable. In fine, we have no
greater variety of critical and exegetical opinion than the divines from
whom we dissent: while the system of Christianity in which our
Scriptural labours have issued, has its leading characteristics better
determined and more apprehensible, than the scheme which the articles
and creeds have vainly laboured to define.

The refusal to embody our sentiments in any authoritative formula
appears to strike observers as a whimsical exception to the general
practice of churches. The peculiarity has had its origin in hereditary
and historical associations: but it has its defence in the noblest
principles of religious freedom and Christian communion. At present, it
must suffice to say, that our Societies are dedicated, not to
theological opinions, but to religious worship: that they have
maintained the unity of the spirit, without insisting on any unity of
doctrine: that Christian liberty, love, and piety are their essentials
in perpetuity, but their Unitarianism an accident of a few or many
generations;—which has arisen, and might vanish, without the loss of
their identity. We believe in the mutability of religious systems, but
the imperishable character of the religious affections;—in the
progressiveness of opinion within, as well as without, the limits of
Christianity. Our forefathers cherished the same conviction: and so, not
having been born intellectual bondsmen, we desire to leave our
successors free. Convinced that uniformity of doctrine can never
prevail, we seek to attain its only good,—peace on earth and communion
with heaven,—without it. We aim to make a true Christendom,—a
commonwealth of the faithful,—by the binding force, not of
ecclesiastical creeds, but of spiritual wants, and Christian sympathies:
and indulge the vision of a Church that “in the latter days shall
arise,” like “the mountain of the Lord,” bearing on its ascent the
blossoms of thought proper to every intellectual clime, and withal
massively rooted in the deep places of our humanity, and gladly rising
to meet the sunshine from on high.

And now, friends and brethren, let us say a glad farewell to the
fretfulness of controversy, and retreat again, with thanksgiving, into
the interior of our own venerated truth. Having come forth, at the
severer call of duty, to do battle for it, with such force as God
vouchsafes to the sincere, let us go in to live and worship beneath its
shelter. They tell you, it is not the true faith. Perhaps not: but then,
you think it so; and that is enough to make your duty clear, and to draw
from it, as from nothing else, the very peace of God. May be, we are on
our way to something better, unexistent and unseen as yet; which may
penetrate our souls with nobler affection, and give a fresh spontaneity
of love to God and all immortal things. Perhaps there cannot be the
truest life of faith, except in scattered individuals, till this age of
conflicting doubt and dogmatism shall have passed away. Dark and leaden
clouds of materialism hide the heaven from us: red gleams of fanaticism
pierce through, vainly striving to reveal it; and not till the weight is
heaved from off the air, and the thunders roll down the horizon, will
the serene light of God flow upon us, and the blue infinite embrace us
again. Meanwhile, we must reverently love the faith we have: to quit it
for one that we have not, were to lose the breath of life, and die.

NOTE.

---------------------

_The Jewish Passover not a proper Sacrifice._

In an essay on “the one great end of the life and death of Christ,” Dr.
Priestley makes the following observations on the words (occurring in 1
Cor. v. 7,) “_Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us_:” “This
allusion to the paschal lamb makes it also probable, that the death of
Christ is called a sacrifice only by way of figure, because these two
(viz., sacrifice and the paschal lamb) are quite different and
inconsistent ideas. The paschal lamb is never so much as termed a
sacrifice in the Old Testament, except once, Exodus xii. 27, where it is
called ‘_the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover_.’ However, it could only
be called a sacrifice in this place, in some secondary and partial
sense, and not in the proper and primary sense of the word; for there
was no priest employed upon the occasion, no altar made use of, no
burning, nor any part offered to the Lord; all which circumstances were
essential to every proper sacrifice. The blood indeed was sprinkled upon
the door-posts, but this was originally nothing more than a token to the
destroying angel to pass by that house; for there is no propitiation or
atonement said to be made by it: and the paschal lamb is very far from
having been ever called a _sin-offering_, or said to be killed on
account of sin.”[626]

Every reader, I apprehend, understands this description of the manner of
celebrating the passover, to refer to the particular “occasion” spoken
of “in this place” (Exod. xii. 27). ‘The writer of this verse,’ argues
Dr. Priestley, ‘could not use the word _sacrifice_ in its strictest
sense; for his own narrative of the very celebration to which it is
applied, describes it as destitute of all the essentials of a proper
sacrifice.’ The allusion to the blood sprinkled upon the door-posts, as
“a token to the destroying angel to pass by that house,” immediately
connects Dr. Priestley’s assertions with the Egyptian passover. By
cutting out this allusion, and otherwise breaking up the passage in
quotation, Archbishop Magee has contrived to conceal its character as an
historical description of a single occasion, and to give it the air of a
general account of the Jewish paschal ceremony in all ages. Having
accomplished this, and obtained for himself the liberty of travelling
for a reply over the whole Hebrew history and traditions, he says; “Now
in answer to these several assertions, I am obliged to state the direct
contradiction of each; for, 1st, the passage in Exodus xii. 27, is _not_
the only one, in which the paschal lamb is termed זבח, a _sacrifice_, it
being expressly so called in no less than four passages in Deuteronomy
(xvi. 2, 4, 5, 6), and also in Exodus xxxv. 25, and its parallel passage
xxiii. 18.—2. A priest _was_ employed.—3. An altar _was_ made use of.—4.
There _was_ a burning, and a part offered to the Lord: the inwards being
burnt upon the altar, and the blood poured out at the foot
thereof.”[627] The _last three_ of these “direct contradictions”
establish nothing but this Prelate’s habit (not adopted, we may presume,
without urgent necessity) of misrepresenting his opponents in order to
confute them: for it is quite needless to observe that, in the Egyptian
passover, of which alone Dr. Priestley speaks, there was neither priest,
altar, nor burning: and though the Archbishop should be able to detect
all these elements in a festival of King Josiah’s time, he will have
proved no error against the passage which he criticises. In his _first_
contradiction, he would have gained an advantage over his opponent, had
not his eagerness induced him to strain his evidence too far. A more
modest disputant would have thought it sufficient to reckon _three
successive verses_ (Deut. xvi. 4, 5, 6) _in which the same phrase is
simply repeated_, as a _single_ instead of a _triple_ authority: the
other citation from the same passage is not to the point, as will
presently be shown: and in one of the verses quoted from Exodus (xxiii.
18) the word זבח does not occur at all in relation to the passover. So
that Dr. Priestley having discovered two passages _too few_, the Prelate
makes compensation by discovering two passages _too many_.

Having said thus much in reference to Archbishop Magee’s fairness to his
opponent, I will add a few strictures on the reasonings by which he
supports his general position, that the passover was a proper sacrifice.
He adduces two arguments from _words_, and three from _facts_. 1. The
word זבח, _sacrifice_, is applied to the passover.—2. The word קרבן,
_Corban_, a _sacred offering_, is applied to it.—3. The slaying of the
lamb took place at the tabernacle or temple.—4. The blood was offered at
the foot of the altar.—5. The fat and entrails were burnt as an offering
on the altar fire.

(1.) It has been already stated, that Archbishop Magee has improperly
adduced _two_ passages, as applying the word _sacrifice_ to the
passover. The first of these is Exod. xxiii. 18, where it is said: “Thou
shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither
shall the fat of my sacrifice remain till morning.” The second clause
here undoubtedly refers to the paschal lamb: but the term “_sacrifice_”
occurring in it is not the proper translation of the original; nor is
the Hebrew word the same that is correctly so rendered in the first
clause. The phrases being not the same, but discriminated, in the two
parts of the verse, the less reason exists for supposing that both
allude to the passover. More probably, the reference in the former is to
the sacrifices appropriate to the _feast of unleavened bread_, which
being contiguous to the passover in time, is naturally conjoined with it
in the precepts of this verse.

The second irrelevant passage is Deut. xvi. 2: “Thou shalt therefore
sacrifice the passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and of the
herd.” Since the paschal _lamb_ could not be taken “_from the herd_,” it
is evident that the word “_passover_,” is used here in a wider
sense,[628] to denote _the joint eight days’ festival, including that of
unleavened bread_, when _heifers_ were offered “from the herd.” This
more comprehensive meaning of the term is frequent, not merely with
Josephus and the later Jewish writers, but in the Hebrew Scriptures
themselves; and renders inconclusive most of the arguments by which the
passover is made to assume the appearance of a proper sacrifice. An
example occurs in the very next verse: “_Seven days thou shalt eat
unleavened bread therewith_,” that is, with the passover; and in 2
Chron. xxxv. 9: “Conaniah also (and other persons) gave unto the priests
for the _passover offerings_, 2,600 small cattle, and 300 _oxen_.”

In the remaining places, however, this feast is undoubtedly called a
sacrifice. But then it is clear that the Hebrew word זבח is used with a
latitude, which renders it impossible to draw from it any inference as
to the character of the ceremony to which it is applied. It denotes
_slaying of animals for food_, without any necessary reference to a
sacred use.[629] Thus, 1 Sam. xxviii. 24. “And the woman had a fat calf
in the house; and she hasted and killed it,” (_sacrificed_ it, תזבחהו);
also 1 Kings, xix. 21. “And he took a yoke of oxen, and slew them
(ויזבחהו), and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen, and
gave unto the people, and they did eat.” And the substantive occurs thus
in Prov. xvii. 1. “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than
a house full of sacrifices (evidently _meats_,—the luxury of animal
food) with strife.”

(2.) The passover is called קרבן, _Corban_, _a sacred offering_, in
Numb. ix. 7, 13. Certain men who had been defiled by performing funeral
rites, present themselves to Moses, and say, “Wherefore are we kept
back, that we may not offer the offering of the Lord in his appointed
season among the children of Israel?” And then follows the law which
Moses takes occasion from this incident to announce; that persons
disqualified by absence on a journey, or by uncleanness, from joining in
the celebration at the appointed time, may observe it at the
corresponding period of the next month. Such disqualifications, if
existing at all, would have excluded from _the whole eight days’
festival, including the feast of unleavened bread_, and held the parties
away till the following month; “the offering of the Lord,” therefore,
which they were kept back from presenting, comprised all the sacrifices
proper to the “season;” and the word “offering” is comprehensively
applied to the whole set, from its particular propriety in reference to
the most numerous portion of them, the sacrifices at the feast of
unleavened bread. The paschal lamb, by itself, is never, I believe,
designated by this term.

In treating of the actual details of the paschal ceremony, it is
necessary to distinguish between those which were of legal obligation,
and those which were merely consuetudinary or occasional. Nothing can
justly be pronounced an essential of the celebration, which is not
enjoined in the statutes appointing it; and should other customs present
themselves in the historical instances of the commemoration which we
possess, they cannot be received as authoritative illustrations of its
intended character, but as accessaries appended by convenience,
tradition, or sacerdotal influence.[630] With this remark I proceed to
the next argument.

(3.) The slaying of the paschal lamb is said to have been restricted to
the tabernacle or temple.

The only passage from the law, adduced to prove this, is Deut. xvi. 2,
5, 6, where it is said, “Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within
any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee; but _at the place
which the Lord thy God shall choose_ to place his name in, there shalt
thou sacrifice the passover at even.” The reader might naturally suppose
that _Jerusalem_ was here denoted by the phrase, “the place which the
Lord thy God shall choose,” in contradistinction from the provincial
cities described as “any of thy gates;” but Archbishop Magee sets aside
this interpretation, by referring us to this very same expression in
Deut. xii. 5, 6, 11, 14, where it evidently means the _tabernacle or
temple_, not the city; for a multitude of rites are there enumerated, to
be performed, “in the place that the Lord shall choose,” which could be
celebrated only at the sanctuary. It so happens, however, that in this
enumeration, the _Passover_ is precisely _the one thing which is not
mentioned_; from which we might fairly infer, that it was not among the
ceremonies limited to the sanctuary; and further, that in addition to
the vague description of place common to both passages, there occurs
exclusively in the latter, the additional one, “there shall ye eat,
BEFORE THE LORD YOUR GOD,” which is well known to be the usual mode of
designating the tabernacle. And that in the passover-law, the locality
intended was the city, and not the sanctuary, is evident from a verse
which Archbishop Magee has not thought it necessary to quote, though it
is the immediate sequel of his citation; “and thou shalt _roast and eat
it_ (the paschal lamb) in the place which the Lord thy God shall
choose.” Whatever doubt may exist about the _slaying_, the _roasting and
eating_ could not take place at the tabernacle.

The law, then, nowhere prescribes the slaying of the paschal lamb at the
sanctuary. But neither does it _forbid_ this; and therefore we are not
surprised that the act should take place there, on any particular
occasion rendering such arrangement obviously convenient; or as a
general practice, in concession to any strong interests tending to draw
it thither. When, therefore, a long period of idolatry and political
confusion had obliterated from the minds of the Israelites the very
memory of their religious rites; when new modes of worship had become
habitual, and the annual festival had grown strange; when, to induce
them to come up to the passover at all, their monarch was obliged to
provide for them the whole number of their victims, and the officiating
Levites needed to study again the appointed ceremonies of the season; it
is no wonder that king Josiah thought it expedient to collect “the whole
congregation” at the temple, and there to let them witness the form of
slaying, by well-trained hands, and receive instruction how to complete
the celebration of their feast. Such was the solemn passover described
in 2 Chron. xxxv. and that in the reign of Hezekiah, mentioned in the
thirtieth chapter of the same book; the circumstances of both which were
too peculiar to afford evidence of a general practice, much less of a
legal essential.

That in later times it was the custom to slay the paschal lambs in the
Temple courts, there can be no doubt. The system of ecclesiastical
police, and the operation of sacerdotal interests created the practice.
It was the business of the priests to see to the execution of the
festival-law; to ascertain who incurred the penalty due to neglect of
the prescribed rite: to register the numbers of those who observed it;
and to take care that neither too many nor too few should partake at the
same table. All this required that the heads of families should present
themselves, and report their intended arrangements to the authorities at
the temple. The priests moreover, being the judges of the qualifications
of the animals for the paschal table, availed themselves of this power,
to become graziers and provision-dealers. As the lambs must be presented
for their inspection, and were liable to be turned back if pronounced
imperfect, it became more convenient to buy the victim at once at the
Temple courts: and on the spot where the purchase was made, the slaying
would naturally follow. Lightfoot, speaking of the law which originally
required the lamb to be chosen four days before it was killed, says, “It
is not to be doubted but every one in after times took up their own
lambs as they did in Egypt, but it is somewhat doubtful whether they did
it in the same manner. It is exceedingly probable, that as the priests
took up the lambs for the daily sacrifice four days before they were to
be offered, as we have observed elsewhere; so also that they provided
lambs for the people at the passover, taking them up in the market four
days before, and picking and culling out those that were fit, and
agreeable to the command. For whereas the law was so punctual that _they
should be without blemish_, and their traditions had summed up so large
a sum of blemishes, as that they reckon seventy-three, it could not be
but the law and their traditions which they prized above the law should
be endlessly broken, if every one took up his own lamb in the market at
Jerusalem at adventure. The priests had brought a market of sheep and
oxen against such times as these into the temple, (for if it had not
been their doing, they must not have come there,) where they having
before-hand picked out in the market such lambs and bullocks as were fit
for sacrifice or passover, they sold them in the temple at a dearer
rate, and so served the people’s turn and their own profit: for which,
amongst other of their hucksteries, our Saviour saith, _they had made
the house of prayer a den of thieves_.”[631]

(4.) The blood is said to have been poured out as an offering at the
foot of the altar.

The only _legal_ evidence adduced to prove this, will be found in the
parallel passages, Exod. xxiii. 18, and xxxiv. 25. “Thou shalt not offer
the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.” I have already shown that this
command probably refers, not to the paschal lamb, but to the sacrifices
at the feast of unleavened bread. There is therefore no evidence,
throughout the law, in favour of the alleged regulation. Yet in cases of
undoubted sacrifice, Moses is usually very explicit in his directions
respecting the sprinkling of the blood upon the altar: as may be seen
from Lev. i. 5, 11, 15; iii. 2, 8, 13; iv. 5-7, 16-18; vii. 2.

The only _historical_ evidence adduced from Scripture on the point
before us, is from the accounts of Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s solemn
passovers before mentioned; 2 Chron. xxx. 15, 16; xxxv. 11. In both
these instances, it is merely said, that the priests “sprinkled (or
poured out) the blood,” receiving it from the hands of the Levites, who
were employed, for reasons already assigned, to slay the lambs on these
two occasions, instead of the heads of families, on whom that office
properly devolved. The altar is not named: but as the blood must be
disposed of _somewhere_, and as there was a drain for that purpose at
the foot of the altar, no doubt it was there that the priests sprinkled
or poured it away. The act was simply an act of cleanliness,—in plain
speech, a resort to the sink,—from which theology can extract nothing
profitable. The priests were the parties to perform the office because
no other persons could approach the altar under penalty of death. In
later times, when the sacerdotal influence had made the temple the scene
of the paschal slaughter, each head of a family killed his own lamb in
the court: the blood, received in a basin, was handed to the first of a
row of priests reaching to the foot of the altar, where it was poured
away at the usual place.[632] In this there is nothing of the nature of
an offering or proper sacrifice.

(5.) But it is said that the fat and entrails were placed on the altar
fire and burned.

Archbishop Magee says, that this “may be collected from the accounts
given of the ceremony of the passover in the passages already referred
to.”[633] It requires perhaps that able controversialist’s peculiar mode
of “managing passages” (to use a favourite phrase of his own) to elicit
this from the authorities named; at least, I am unable, after careful
examination of them, to conjecture what he means. The passages however
are before my readers, and I must leave the assertion to their judgment.
Meanwhile, I must conclude, that there is absolutely no trace in
Scripture of such a practice as is here pronounced to be one of the
essentials of the passover.

I am aware that there is _Talmudical_ authority for considering this
“burning” as a part of the process connected, in later times, with the
killing of the paschal lamb.[634] It was probably one of the
modifications of the rite, introduced by the priests on its transference
from the private homes of the people to the temple. The original law
required, that the lamb should be roasted whole, not even the entrails
being removed; it also enjoined, that whatever was left should be
immediately burned with fire, and every trace of it destroyed before
morning.[635] This private burning was clearly no religious and
sacrificial act, though, perhaps, a provision against any superstitious
use of the remnants: and it is easy to perceive, that the parts thus
destroyed would be the same, which subsequently it was the custom of the
priests to consume on the altar fire. When the killing became a
collective act, and the temple the scene of it, doubtless both people
and priests thought it more cleanly and agreeable to burn the parts
which were sure to be left, _before hand_ on the public fire, than
_afterwards_ on the hearths of their private dwellings: and it would
require a very illiberal interpreter to pronounce this a violation of
the original law, the spirit of which it certainly observed. This view,
which treats the burning on the altar as simply a mode of consumption,
substituted for the destruction of the same worthless parts at home, is
less insulting to the Jewish religion than the opinion which discerns
here an act of worship. The Jews were certainly a very coarse people,
and offered many disagreeable things to God: but really, such a gift as
this is without any parallel. They always,—in obedience to their
law,—presented _something_ valuable (sometimes the whole animal,
sometimes the breast and right shoulder), either to Jehovah on the
altar, or to his ministers the priests:[636] and the pious Jew would
have indignantly resented the idea of quitting the temple courts with
the whole value of his sacrifice on his shoulder, and only the refuse
remaining in the sanctuary.

By law, then, there was nothing of the paschal lamb burned on the altar:
and by custom there was no part offered to Jehovah or given to the
priests: and without these characteristics, there is no proper
sacrifice.

Archbishop Magee admits, that the ceremony of laying the hand on the
head of the victim, which was observed in the undoubted sacrifices, did
not take place in the rite under consideration: and he notices the
statement of Philo, that the animal was slain, not by the priest, but by
the individual presenting it.[637] He considers Philo to have been
mistaken, however, in his assertion that this immolation by private hand
was peculiar to the passover; and cites the language of Lev. i. 4, 5;
iii. 2; iv. 24, to show that the burnt offering, the peace-offering, the
sin-offering, might all be slain by the offerer. Certainly these
passages appear to leave such permission open to the Israelitish
worshipper: but it seems more likely that the sacrifices here enumerated
were intended to be made by the hands of the priest: nor would it be
easy to reconcile the liberty of private sacrifice with the sacerdotal
duties and privileges defined in Num. xviii. 1-7. As to the actual
practice, it cannot be reasonably doubted that Philo was correct: and
his expressions seem to imply that, in the paschal rite, the priest
might be altogether dispensed with, and his intervention required for no
religious act. He says: “On the fourteenth day of this month, at the
coming of the full moon, is celebrated the public festival of the
passover, called in the Chaldee language the Pascha: when, instead of
the private citizen presenting his victim at the altar to be slain by
the priest, the whole nation officiates in sacred things, every one in
turn bringing and immolating his own victim with his own hands. The
whole people is festive and joyous, every one being entitled to the
dignity of priesthood.”[638] He uses similar expressions in his treatise
on the decalogue: The festival, “which the Hebrews in their language
call the Pascha,” is a time “when each and all of them slay their
victim, without waiting for the services of their priests: the law, on
an appointed day of every year, conceding to the whole people the
sacerdotal functions, to the extent of permitting them to officiate for
themselves at a sacrifice.”[639] This language evidently implies, that
_every essential part_ of the passover rites, every act necessary to
constitute and complete its character as a religious celebration, was
performed by private hand: so that the auxiliary operations of the
priests,—the pouring out of the blood and burning the inwards,—must be
regarded as non-essentials and accessaries; menial contributions to the
main act; and in the performance of which, therefore, the usual law,
forbidding to the non-official Jew all approach to the altar, came into
effect again. Had the paschal celebration required, as an indispensable
ingredient in it, any transactions at the altar, the private Israelite,
being temporarily invested with whatever sacerdotal privileges were
needful for the rite, would have gone himself to make his offering.
Philo indeed obviously conceived of the subsequent part of the ceremony,
in which the temple and the priest had no share,—the domestic meal which
took place in the several homes of the people,—as its peculiarly sacred
element: “Each house,” he says, “at that time put on the form and
sanctity of a temple, the victim that has been slain being made ready
for a suitable meal.”[640] Fond as this writer is of types, it is
impossible to express the retrospective and commemorative character of
the passover more emphatically than in his words: ὑπομνητικὴ τῆς
μεγίστης ἀποικίας ἐστὶν ἡ ἑορτὴ, καὶ χαριστήριος.[641]

In one passage of his note on the Passover, Archbishop Magee appears to
admit that the paschal lamb was not a “_sacrifice for sin_,” and affirms
that he “would not dispute with Dr. Priestley any conclusion he might
draw from so productive a premiss.”[642] Yet, a few pages further on, he
quotes with apparent approbation the arguments by which Cudworth sought
to prove the rite to be an _expiatory sacrifice_.[643] I cannot pretend
to reconcile these two portions of his Essay. But if the passover cannot
be shown to be an expiatory sacrifice, I do not see what the advocates
of the doctrine of atonement gain by proving it a sacrifice at all. If
the paschal lamb was not a _sin-offering_, to what class did it belong?
It must have been either of the eucharistic kind, or else unique and
simply commemorative; and so far as the death of Christ was analogous to
any _such_ offering, it was destitute of expiatory efficacy: and either
was an expression of thanksgiving, (which seems absurd) or, like the
blood of the lamb sprinkled on the lintel, a mere _sign_ of some
deliverance which it was not instrumental in effecting, but which,
simultaneously perhaps, yet independently occurred. Those, therefore,
who are disposed to strain the resemblance between the passover and the
cross, must either maintain the _expiatory_ nature of the Jewish right,
or admit the Lord’s Supper to be, not even the celebration of a real
deliverance, but the mere _commemoration of a sign_.

POSTSCRIPT.

In the notes to the Sixth Lecture of this series (p. 89-92,) I have
adduced an example of Archbishop Magee’s misrepresentation of Mr.
Belsham, and stated that the Prelate had quoted his opponent falsely. In
comparing the two authors, I employed the latest editions of both their
works; not being able to procure a copy of the first edition of the Calm
Enquiry, which has been out of print for twenty-two years. At the same
time, I thought it only just to insert the following note: “There is a
possibility, which I think it right to suggest, of a difference between
the two editions of Mr. B.’s work; as, however, the accusation is still
found in the newest edition of the Archbishop’s book, I conclude that
this is not the case. Indeed, even if the Prelate’s quotation had been
_verbally_ true, it would _in spirit_ have been no less false; for, at
all events, Mr. B. cites the Vulgate, to give evidence as to the _text_,
not the _translation_; and had he used the word _renders_, it would only
have been because the term naturally occurs when a VERSION is adduced to
determine a READING.”

I have since obtained a copy of the first edition of the Calm Enquiry;
and I hasten to acknowledge that the Archbishop’s quotation _is_
“_verbally_ true,” as far as it goes. But I regret to say that this
makes only a formal difference in his favour; for by stopping short in
his citation, he accomplished the very same object, of leaving an
absolutely false impression, which I had supposed him to have effected,
in this as in other instances, by direct falsification of his author. He
wishes to make it appear, that Mr. Belsham (purposely mistranslating for
the occasion,) appeals to a certain verse in the Vulgate in evidence,
not of a READING, but of a RENDERING; and so he cites these words from
the Calm Enquiry: “The Vulgate renders the text, the first man was of
the earth, earthy; the second man was from heaven, heavenly;” but he
leaves out the very next words, in which _the point intended to be
proved_ by this testimony of the Vulgate is cited, “This is not
improbably the TRUE READING.” Doubtless it was one of Mr. Belsham’s
_incuriæ_ that he did not attend to his italics in his first edition:
but the charge of intentional mistranslation is simply injurious; except
indeed, that it is also absurd, seeing that Mr. Belsham has put the
Latin of his mistranslated passage at the bottom of the page;—a policy
which this heresiarch could scarcely have thought safe, unless he had
taken his Unitarian readers to be either more “dishonest critics,” or
more “defective scholars,” than even our learned opponents are prepared
to think them.

------------------------------------

Footnotes for Lecture XIII.

Footnote 607:

Ps. li. 16, 17.

Footnote 608:

Is. i. 13, 14, 16.

Footnote 609:

Conference with Fisher, § 15; quoted in Tracts for the Times, No. 76.
Catena Patrum, No. II. p. 18.

Footnote 610:

Of Persons dying without Baptism, p. 979; quoted in _loc. cit._ pp.
19, 20.

Footnote 611:

History of Popish Transubstantiation, ch. 4; printed in the Tracts for
the Times, No. 27, pp. 14, 15.

Footnote 612:

Bishop of Exeter’s charge, delivered at his Triennial Visitation in
August, September, and October, 1836, p. 44-47.

Footnote 613:

Tracts for the Times, No. 4, p. 5.

Footnote 614:

Ibid. No. 5, pp. 9, 10.

Footnote 615:

Luke iv. 18, 19.

Footnote 616:

Archbishop Whately, speaking of the word ἱερεὺς and its meaning,
says; “This is an office assigned to none under the gospel-scheme,
except the ONE great High Priest, of whom the Jewish Priests were
types.”[c] Of the “_gospel-scheme_,” this is quite true; of the
_Church-of-England scheme_, it is not. There lies before me Duport’s
Greek version of the Prayer-Book and Offices of the Anglican Church:
and turning to the Communion Service, I find the officiating
clergyman called ἱερεὺς throughout. The _absence_ of this word from
the records of the primitive Gospel, and its _presence_ in the
Prayer-Book, is perfectly expressive of the difference in the spirit
of the two systems;—the difference between the Church _with_, and
the “Christianity _without_ Priest.”

Footnote c:

Elements of Logic. Appendix: Note on the word “Priest.”

Footnote 617:

Matt. xviii. 18.

Footnote 618:

See Rom. vi. 2-4. “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer
therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him
by baptism into death; that, like as Christ was raised up from the
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in
newness of life.” Mr. Locke observes of “St. Paul’s argument,” that it
“is to show into what state of life we ought to be raised out of
baptism, in similitude and conformity to that state of life Christ was
raised into from the grave.” See also Col. ii. 12. “Ye are ... buried
with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the
faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.” The
force of the image clearly depends on the sinking and rising in the
water.

Footnote 619:

See Note.

Footnote 620:

Compare Matt. xxvi. 26-28; Mark xiv. 22-24; Luke xxii. 19, 20, with
Exod. xii. 3-11, 14, 24-27, 43-49; Lev. xxiii. 5; Num. ix. 10-14;
xxviii. 16; Deut. xvi. 1, 4-7.

Footnote 621:

Compare Matt. xxvi. 17-21; Mark xiv. 12-17; Luke xxii. 7-17, with John
xiii. 1, seqq.; xviii. 28; xix. 14, 31, 42. See also 2nd Lecture, pp.
38, 39.

Footnote 622:

See 1 Cor. xi. 17-34.

Footnote 623:

Prov. ii. 4.

Footnote 624:

Mr. Dalton’s Lecture on the Eternity of Future Rewards and
Punishments, p. 760.

Footnote 625:

Mr. Dalton’s Lecture, p. 760.

Footnote 626:

Theological Repository, vol. i. p. 215, and Priestley’s Works, by
Rutt, vol. vii. pp. 243, 244.

Footnote 627:

Magee on the Atonement, vol. i. pp. 291, 292, 5th edit.

Footnote 628:

This is admitted by a learned writer, with whose work on sacrifices
Archbishop Magee was familiar, and who had anticipated most of his
arguments on the subject of the passover: “Cum ad Paschale sacrificium
etiam pecudes ex armento lectas in sacris literis imperatas legimus,
non designatur illa victima, quæ פסח proprie appellatur, sed alia
quædam sacrificia eidem victimæ adjungenda.”—_Outram de Sacrificiis_,
lib. i. ch. xiii. § 10.

Footnote 629:

Simonis describes the _verb_ זבח as meaning (1.) in genere _mactavit_;
(2.) in specie _mactavit ad sacrificandum_; and the _noun_, as proprie
_mactatio_; metonym. (1.) _caro mactatorum animalium_; (2.)
_sacrificium_.—_Lex. Hebr. et Chald. Ed. Eichhorn, in_ v.

Footnote 630:

The following passages constitute the whole passover-law: Exod. xii.
3-11, 14, 24-27, 43-49. Lev. xxiii. 5. Num. ix. 10-14; xxviii. 16.
Deut. xvi. 1, 4-7. We have here the original statutes provided for the
perpetual regulation of the rite: and in any discussion respecting its
character, the appeal should be to these alone. The advocates for its
sacrificial nature must be aware that this rule would destroy their
whole case.

I subjoin a list of the passages relating to the feast of unleavened
bread: Exod. xii. 15-20; xiii. 6-10; xxiii. 18, first clause; xxxiv.
25, first clause. Lev. xxiii. 6-14. Num. xxviii. 17-25. Deut. xvi.
2-4, 8.

Footnote 631:

Lightfoot’s Temple Service, ch. xii. Introd.

Footnote 632:

See Lightfoot’s Temple Service, ch. xii. sec. 5. “The Mishna says:
Mactat Israelita, excipit sanguinem sacerdos.”—The Treatise
_Pesachim_, in Surenhus. ii. 153.

Footnote 633:

P. 294.

Footnote 634:

See Lightfoot’s Temple Service, xii. 5, and the Treatise _Pesachim_,
Surenh. ii. 135.

Footnote 635:

Exod. xii. 9, 10. The phrase “_the purtenance thereof_,” in the common
version, means “_the entrails thereof_,” קרבו‎.

Footnote 636:

See Lev. i. 9, 13, 17; vi. 15-18, 26, 29; vii. 3, 6-10, 14, 15, 30-36.

Footnote 637:

Pp. 295, 296.

Footnote 638:

De vitâ Mosis, p. 686. E.

Footnote 639:

De decalogo, p. 766. D.

Footnote 640:

De sept. et fest. p. 1190. B.

Footnote 641:

_loc. cit._ After the remarks which have been made on the word זבח as
an epithet of the passover, it is hardly necessary to notice the
application to the same rite of the word θυσία by Philo and Josephus.
It must be clear to any one who will open Trommius or Biel at the
word, that it will not bear the stress laid upon it by Archbishop
Magee. No one denies that the paschal lamb was slain and eaten, in
observance of a religious celebration, in obedience to a religious
law, and in expression of religious feeling; and this surely is enough
to attract to it the word θυσία. In itself, however, the term,
according to Biel, does not necessarily denote even so much as this.
He defines it _hostia_, _sacrificium_, etiam _epulum_ ac _profana
manducatio_: and he exemplifies this latter meaning by reference to
Judg. vi. 18. Biel’s Thesaurus, Ed. Schleusner in v.

Footnote 642:

P. 292.

Footnote 643:

Pp. 298, 299.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

INDEX OF TEXTS.

EXPLAINED OR REFERRED TO IN LECTURES II. V. VI. XI. XIII.

Lect. & Page.

Genesis.

ii. 17 VI. 17
iii. 1 XI. 16
— 14-19 — 17
— 15 — 19
xviii. 1, 2 V. 18
— 22 — —
xix. 10 — —
— 15 — —

Exodus.

xii. 3-11 XIII. 35 - 59
— 14 — — - 59
— 15-20 — 59
— 21-27 — 35, 59
— 27 — 55
— 43-49 — 35, 59
xiii. 6-10 — 59
xxiii. 18 — 56, 57, 59, 61
xxx. 10 VI. 58
xxxiv. 25 XIII. 56, 59, 61

Leviticus.

i. 5 XIII. 61
— 9 — 63
— 11 — 61
— 13 — 63
— 15 — 61
— 17 — 63
iii. 2 — 61
— 8 — —
— 13 — —
iv. 5-7 — —
— 16-18 — —
v. 11-19 VI. 57
vi. 15-18 XIII. 63
— 26 — —
— 29 — —
vii. 2 — 61
— 3 — 63
— 6-10 — —
— 14, 15 — —
— 30-36 — —
xii. 1-8 VI. 57
xiv. — —
xvi. — 58
xx. 25, 26 — 57
xxiii. 5 XIII. 35, 59
— 6-14 — 59
— 26-32 — 58

Numbers.

vi. 9-12 VI. 57
ix. 7 XIII. 58
— 10-14 — 35, 59
— 13 — 58
xiv. 19, 20 VI. 23
xviii. 1-7 XIII. 64
xix. 11-20 VI. 57
xxii. 22 XI. 21
xxviii. 1-6 XIII. 59
— 17-25 — —
xxix. 7-11 VI. 58

Deuteronomy.

xii. 5, 6 XIII. 59
— 11 — —
— 14 — —
xvi. 1 — 35, 59
xvi. 2 XIII. 56, 57, 59
— 4-7 — 35, 59
— 5, 6 — 59
— 8 — —
xxix. 1-6 VI. iii
— 2-6 V. 18

Judges.

vi. 18 XIII. 65

1 Samuel.

xxviii. 24 XIII. 58
xxix. 4 XI. 21

2 Samuel.

xxiv. 1 XI . 22

1 Kings.

xi. 25 XI. 21
xviii. 21 V. 77
xix. 21 XIII. 58

2 Kings.

xv. 29 V. 28
xix. 21 — 67

1 Chronicles.

v. 26 V. 28
xxi. 1 XI. 22

2 Chronicles.

xxx. XIII. 60
— 15, 16 — 61
xxxv. — 60
— 9 — 57
— 11 — 61

Job.

i. 6-12 XI. 22
ii. 1-7 — —

Psalms.

xiv. V. 37
li. 16, 17 VI. 25
— — XIII. 9
cxix. 6 XI. 22

Proverbs.

viii. 22 V. 73
— 30 — —
xvii. 1 XIII. 58

Isaiah.

i. 13, 14 XIII. 10
i. 16 XIII. 10
— 16-18 VI. 25
v. 18-20 XI. 3
vii. 14-16 V. 25
— — — 66
viii. 23 — 68
— — IX. 4
viii. 8 V. 67
— 18 — —
ix. 5, 6 — 28
— 6 — 68
xxiii. 12 — 67

Jeremiah.

xiv. 17 V. 27
xxxi. 4 — 66
— 13 — 67

Lamentations.

i. 15 V. 67

Ezekiel.

xxxiii. 14-16 VI. 25

Amos.

v. 2 V. 27

Jonah.

iii. 5-10 VI. 23, 24
iv. 10, 11 — 24

Micah.

iv. 8, 9 V. 27

Zachariah.

iii. 1, 2 XI. 22

Matthew.

i. 23 V. 24
ii. 15 II. 55
— 23 — —
— — V. 68
iv. 1-11 XI. 27
— 12-22 II. 36
xii. 3 — 29
xiii. 58 — 25
xv. 24 VI. 36
xviii. 18 XIII. 30
xix. 16-21 VI. 25
xxvi. 17-21 XIII. 35
— 26-28 — —
xxvi. 28 VI. 40
— 69 seqq. II. 37
xxvii. 32 — —
— 37 — —
— 44 — —
xxviii. 19 V. 50
— — VI. iv

Mark.

i. 12, 13 XI. 27
— 16-20 II. 36
x. 45 VI. 40
xiii. 32 V. 50
xiv. 12-17 XIII. 35
— 22-24 — —
xv. 26 II. 37
— 32 — —

Luke.

i. 2 II. 28
— 15 — —
iv. 1-13 XI. 27
— 18, 19 XIII. 28
v. 10, 11 II. 36
vii. 47 VI. 30
x. 17 II. 26
xxii. 7-17 XIII. 35
— 19, 20 — —
— 56-62 II. 37
xxiii. 26 — —
— 38 — —
— 39-43 — —

John.

i. 1-14 V. 28, 69
— 12 VI. 71
— 29 — 40
— 35-51 II. 36
iii. 13 V. 51
iv. 23, 24 — 48
— 48 II. 25
v. 19 V. 49
— 29, 30 — 53
— 30 — 49
— 36 — —
vi. 44 II. 8
— — XI. 47
vi. 57 V. 49
— 62 — 51
vii. 17 II. 9
viii. 42 XI. 46
— 47 — —
x. 14 — 47
— 16, 17 VI. 36
— 18 V. 52
— 27 II. 9
— — XI. 47
x. 29 V. 49
— 32 II. 25
— 37 — 9, 25
xii. 23, 24 VI. 35
— 32 — —
xiii. 1 seqq. XIII. 35
xiv. 10 V. 49
— 16, 17 II. 30
— 23 — 7
— 26 — 30
xvii. 3 V. 47
— 5 — 51
xviii. 15-25 II. 37
— 28 XIII. 35
— 37 II. 9, 25
xix. 14 XIII. 35
— 17 II. 37
— 19 — —
— 31 XIII. 35
— 35 II. 28
— 42 XIII. 35
xxi. 24 II. 28

Acts.

ii. 1-4 II. 27, 28
— 24 VI. 27
— 32 V. 52
iii. 15 VI. 27
— 19-21 V. 39
iv. 2 VI. 27
— 10 — —
— 12 — 70
v. 30 — 27
vi. 1-4 II. 28
x. 34-44 VI. 26
xiii. 30 VI. 28
— 30-34 V. 40
— 33-37 — 39
xiv. 15 — 44
xvii. 18 VI. 28
— 31 V. 40, 53
— — VI. 28
xx. 28 — 40, 84
xxi. 20 II. 52
xxiv. 21 VI. 27
xxvi. 6-8 V. 39
— 26 II. 6

Romans.

i. 4. V. 40
— 6 XI. 18
ii. 25 VI. 49
— 29 XI. 18
iii. 9-23 — —
— 22-26 VI. 45
— 25 — 28
iv. 24, 25 — —
v. 6 — 37
— 10 — 38
— 11 — —
— 12-20 XI. 18
vi. 2-4 XIII. 32
vii. 1-4 VI. 37
viii. 6 V. 45
— 19 — —
— 23 — —
— 34 VI. 28
ix. 4 VI. 38
— 22, 23 — 51
x. 9 — 28
xiii. 11, 12 V. 40

1 Corinthians.

v. 7 VI. 44
— — XIII. 55
vii. 29 — 51
viii. 5, 6 V. 4
— 6 — 47
x. 11 — 39
xi. 3 — 77
xi. 17-34 XIII. 36
xii. 8-10 II. 28
xiv. 4, 5 — —
— 13 — —
— 19 — —
— 23 — —
xv. 21, 22 XI. 18
— 24 V. 45
— 47 VI. 89
— — XIII. 66
— 51 V. 45

2 Corinthians.

iii. 17 V. 77
v. 15-18 VI. 36
— 17 V. 44
— 21 VI. 43
viii. 9 V. 41

Galatians.

i. 1 V. 52
ii. 15 VI. 37
iii. 13 — 50
— 24 II. 4
iv. 47 VI. 38

Ephesians.

i. 3-5 VI. 38
— 7 — —
— 10 — —
— 20-23 V. 43
ii. 11-18 VI. 39
iii. 19 V. 44
iv. 13 VI. 71
v. 16 — 51

Philippians.

ii. 5-8 V. 41
— 6 — 78
— 9-11 — 43
— 10 — 45
iii. 15 VI. 71
iv. 5 V. 39
— — VI. 51

Colossians.

i. 15-19 V. 44
— 19 VI. 38
ii. 12 XIII. 32
— 13 VI. 38
iii. 3 — —
iv. 5 — 51

1 Thessalonians.

iv. 14 V. 45
— 17 — —
v. 10 — —

2 Thessalonians.

i. 7-10 VI. 50
— 9 V. 45
ii. 2 — 39

1 Timothy.

i. 20 XI. 21
ii. 1-8 VI. 40
— 14 XI. 18
iii. 16 V. 35
iv. 1 — 39

2 Timothy.

ii. 12 V. 45
iii. 16 II. 31

Titus.

ii. 12, 13 V. 39

Hebrews.

i. 1-9 V. 36
— 3 — 40
— 5 — —
— 6 — 45
ii. 5 — 39
— 17 VI. 53
vii. 16 — 59
— 17 — 61
— 24-28 — —
— 25 — 60
viii. 1 — 59
— 2, 3 — —
— 5 — —
ix. 1 VI. 59
— 7 — 60
— 8 — 61
— 12 — 60
— 13, 14 — 62
ix. 15 VI. 60
— 23, 24 — 59
— 25-27 — 60
x. 3, 4 — —
— 12-14 — —
— 16 — 63
— 19, 20 — —
— 24 — —
xii. 28 V. 45

James.

v. 3 V. 39
— 7, 8 — —
— 8 — 51

1 Peter.

i. 5 V. 45
— 18, 19 VI. 41
ii. 4, 5 XIII. 3
— 23-25 VI. 41
iii. 17 — 42
— 20-22 — 51
— 20 V. 39
iv. 3 VI. 42
— 7 — 51

2 Peter.

i. 21 II. 31
ii. 1-18 XI. 63, 64
— 4 XI. 24
— 5 VI. 51
iii. 9 V. 40
— — VI. 51
— 13 V. 39

1 John.

i. 7 VI. 47
— 8 — 48
ii. 1, 2 — —
— 18 — 51
iii. 4 V. 77
— 16 VI. 48
iv. 2 — 47
— 9, 10 — 48
v. 6 V. 77
— 20 — 41
v. 21 VI. 48

2 John.

7 V. 41

Jude.

4-16 XI. 63, 64
6 — 24

Revelations.

v. 9, 10 VI. 40

Transcriber’s Notes.

Obvious typographical errors were silently corrected.

Unusual or older spellings were retained. Many of the substitutions
shown were made after researching other later editions or the cited
quotations.

Each lecture has its own page numbers which do not show. Links above do
work in the html version.

The following changes were made:

'allcreated' to 'all created' in page 38 of the Correspondence.
'ἐπὼνυμοι' (a typo) to 'ἐπώνυμοί' in Footnote 116 in Lec. 2 and
similar corrections in the next few footnotes.
'αἰῶυες' corrected to αἰῶνες' on p. 30 of Lec. 3.
'comformably' to 'conformably' in Appendix, p. 44 of Lec. 3.
'even' to 'every' on p. 17 of Lecture 4.
'is link' to 'is to link' on p. 34 of Lecture 5.
'θεός ἔστιν' to 'θεός ἐστιν', footnote on page 35 of lecture 5, to
agree with other copies of Ignatius's work.
'Δἰ οὗ, not ὑφ’ οὗ' to 'Δι’ οὗ, not ὑφ’ οὗ', footnote on page 37 of
lecture 5.
'prinpalities' to 'principalities', p. 44, Lec. 5.
'docrine' to 'doctrine', p. 59, in Notes to Lec. 5.
'incompatability' to 'incompatibility', p. 60, Notes to Lec. 5.
'ἄλλα' to 'ἀλλά', 3rd footnote on p. 73, Notes to Lec. 5.
period to colon to agree with both lower-case theta and punct. in
several editions of Philo in 3rd footnote on p. 73 to Notes to
Lec. 5.
'ἐννοήσις' to 'ἐννόησις', p. 74, Notes to Lec. 5.
'δὶ' to 'δι’', p. 75, Notes to Lec. 5.
'2 Tim. ii. xii' to '2 Tim. ii. 12' Footnote 234 of Lec. 5.
'that guilt is be estimated' to 'that guilt be estimated' on p. 20
of Lec. 6.
'justifying faith in' to 'justifying faith is' on p. 28 of Lecture
6.
deletion of duplicate ‘the’ on p. 54 of Lec. 6.
'scructure' to 'structure', p. 59 of Lec. 6.
'sacifice' to 'sacrifice', p. 61 of lecture 6.
'or' to 'for' and 'aditional' to 'additional' in last footnote on
page 61 of lecture 6.
'Archishop’s' to 'Archbishop’s' on page 89 in Notes to lecture 6.
'hear' to 'here' on p. 17 of lecture 8.
insertion of ” after 'theology' on p. 39 of lecture 8.
'commuications' to 'communications' on p. 52 of lecture 9.
' is is said', to ' it is said,' on p. 5 of Lecture 10.
'adamat' to 'adamant' on p. 8 of Lecture 10.
'Laies' to 'Laics' on page 39 of Lecture 10.
'Apotles' to 'Apostles' on p. 40 of lecture 10.
'othodox' to 'orthodox' on p. 41 of lecture 10.
'frustate' to 'frustrate' on p. 5 of lecture 11.
'origin of of evil' to 'origin of evil' on p. 32 of lecture 11.
comma between 'feeling' and 'that man' on page 7 of lecture 13 was
deleted.
The open and close quotes were rendered as printed on page 61 of
lecture 6 even though they are not balanced.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Unitarianism Defended - A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting - Ministers of Liverpool" ***

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