Chapter XXIII: Preface (1)

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.”