Chapter VII: A fourth general Council, A.D. 451, found it necessary, for (1)

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.

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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: