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?"*

There are only two passages in the whole gospels, in which the title has ever been supposed to be given to Christ, and

* John x. 34.

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." *

The only other passage of any force in which deity is supposed to be accorded to Jesus, † 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 Drought 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."