Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

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

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

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

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

Your fellow-labourers,

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

-----

Footnote 10:

Rev. F. Ould’s Letter of February 11.

Footnote 11:

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

Footnote 12:

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

Footnote 13:

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

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

Footnote 14:

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

Footnote 15:

Lord King’s Life of Locke, p. 125.

Footnote 16:

Sermons at the Boyle Lecture, Prop. xiv.

Footnote 17:

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

Footnote 18:

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

Footnote 19:

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

Footnote 20:

Ibid. Prop. x. p. 296.

Footnote 21:

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

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THE

PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE

OF THE

UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

J. H. T.

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THE

PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE

OF THE

UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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