Prefixed to the Bishop's Memorial is "A Demonstration of the Three Great Truths of Christianity that there is a God, that there is only one God, and that the three Divine Persons, FATHER, SON and HOLY SPIRIT, are God and only one God." (Pref. pp. 19, 20.) But alas! this demonstration consists in the Bishop's assertion, and moreover his assertion of what is palpably erroneous: e. g. "The Scriptures declare that there are three omnipresent Persons." (Pref. p. 21.) Let the Bishop point out this declaration in the Scriptures or confess his presumption. He adds, " and as there cannot be two omnipresent, that is, infinite Beings, the three omnipresent Persons can be only one God." Here Mr. B. asks

"Do I rightly understand his lordship? There are three omnipresent PERSONS; but there cannot be two, much less three omnipresent Beings. Does it not directly follow that persons are not Beings, and consequently that the three persons of the Trinity are three NON-ENTITIES?"

The baptismal commission is a part of the Bishop's demonstration. If baptism were not to have been administered in the name of three divine persons, it would have been, he argues, "in the name of God, of a man and an attribute:" upon which his acute Reviewer says,

66

But perhaps this observation would not appear so conclusive to a person accustomed to the idioms and peculiarities of the Jewish writers, as to a common English reader. When it is said 1 Chron. xxix. 20, that the whole congregation worshiped the Lord and the king,' it by no means proves that the two persons so associated were equal in their nature, or that the same kind of homage was paid to both. Nor, when the apostle Paul commends his Ephesian friends (Acts xx. 32) to God, and to the word of his grace," does it at all follow that because God is a person, the word of his grace is so likewise. The argument therefore from the text in Matthew, for the distinct personality of the Holy Spirit, and much more for the proper deity of the three persons in the Trinity, is very infirm, even admitting the text itself to be genuine. The authenticity of this text is however liable to considerable suspicion from the circumstance, that all the baptisms of which we read in the New Testament appear to have been administered into the name of Christ

only, and not into those of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, according to the form prescribed in the gospel of Matthew."

This reply is satisfactory; but we

have often doubted, and, with deference to Mr. Belsham, we still doubt whether Unitarians do not rather lose than gain ground with their opponents by suggesting the spuriousness of difficult texts, which are established upon the same external evidence as the whole of the sacred volume. If a rational interpretation can be given of a pas sage which is alleged against us,and which we have no authority to exclude from the text of scripture, it is surely To throw out doubts at sufficient.

the moment that we are hampered with difficulties, exposes us to the charge of cutting the knot which we cannot untie.

Mr. B. has one short but all-sufficient chapter (iv) to vindicate the claims of Unitarians to be considered as Christians. We fear, however, that they, whether bishops or curates, who stand in need of such an argument, are impenetrable by it. What reasoning can be expected to reach such a writer as the bishop, who, fearing that he may not succeed in persuading the legislature to go back a century and re-enact persecuting statutes, has another string to his bow, and contends that, in spite of the Trinity Bill, Unitarians may yet be convicted on the Blasphemy Act! He is ten years older than when he published his notable "First Principles," which underwent examination in our First Volume (pp. 425 and 633); how much wiser he has grown, let his latest works deter

mine.

Mr. B. has the honour of being singled out by the bishop as an object of attack. His lordship even boasts of being "well acquainted with Mr. Belsham's writings." He must have formed a very inadequate estimate of his antagonist if he supposed that he was to be silenced or confuted by the demonstration" propounded in the Memorial.

In the "Calm Inquiry," Mr. B. had said that "the inquiry concerning the person of Christ is into a plain matter of fact, which is to be determined, like any other fact by its specific evidence, the evidence of plain unequivocal testimony; for judging of which no other qualifications are requisite than a sound understanding and an honest mind:" at this assertion the bishop starts back: his opponent justies himself by the following statement of the case of "a man of sound under

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Review.-Belsham's Reply to Burgess.

standing and an honest mind, who does not know a word of Greek and who has only King James's translation before him," reasoning upon the subject of Christ's person:

"Such a person might rationally argue in the following manner: If Jesus Christ, who appeared in the form of a man with all the incidents of frail human nature, had in truth been very and eternal God,-when this fact was first revealed to his disciples, how must their minds have been absorbed and overwhelmed with astonishment and terror: At Lystra, when the people inferred from the miracies of the apostles ، that the gods were come down in the likeness of men,' Acts xiv. 11, the whole city was in an uproar. Every one was filled with amazement, and priests and people assembled together to worship, and to offer sacrifices to their celestial visitants. All this is natural, and probable, and exactly what might be expected upon an occasion so extraordinary.-What then must have been the feelings and the conduct of Jews, educated as they had been in such exalted ideas of the Great Supreme, when a discovery so new, so unexpected, so remote from all their conceptions and ideas, so amazing, so overwhelming, was made known to them, that the person whom they conceived to be the son of Joseph and Mary, with whom they had conversed for months and years with the greatest familiarity, whom many of them had witnessed as having passed through the various stages of human life, from helpless infancy to vigorous manhood, was, WHAT?-no other than the ETERNAL and ALMIGHTY GOD, the INFINITE JEHO VAH, the CREATOR of heaven and earth How would they feel, how would they act when this surprising and alarming discovery was made? Would they associate and converse with him as familiarly as before, would they reason with him, would they rebuke him, would they desert him, would they deny him? Let every one consider with himself what his own feelings would be after such an awful disclosure. Then look into the New Testament, consult the evangelical history, what was the conduct of the disciples of Jesus in the circumstances supposed? They discover no surprise, they abate nothing of their freedom and familiarity; from the beginning to the end of his ministry their behaviour is uniform; they talk to him as a companion, they love him as a friend, they revere him as a master, they bow to him as a prophet of the Most High-but nothing is said, nothing is done which indicates the least suspicion that he was in reality any thing more than he was in appearance, much less that he was the eternal Jehovah himself!

"Let it then be supposed that this important and astonishing fact was not revealed to them till after his resurrection,

*

till the day of Pentecost. In this case they must have understood the language used in John, upon which so much stress is constantly laid in this important discussion, as consistent with the proper humanity of Jesus Christ And would the apostle Peter, immediately upon this grand discovery, when addressing the assembled crowd, impressed and agitated as his mind must have been with the novelty, the magnitude and the importance of the doctrine, would he have spoken of this tremendous being, this 5 very God of very God,' under no higher character than that of a man approved by God by signs and wonders, who was now exalted to God's right hand?

"How deeply are the minds of Trinitariaus penetrated with a sense of the grandeur, sublimity and importance of their favourite doctrine! How seldom, how slightly do they think and speak of Jesus as a man, in comparison with the frequency and earnestness with which they think and speak of him as a God! But how much more deeply must the minds of the primitive disciples have been impressed with the stupendous discovery! It must have seized and kept possession of every faculty of their sonls. In the present age the doctrine of a trinity of persons in the Deity, and of an incarnate and crucified God, are so common and familiar that they almost cease to shock the mind. But to the primitive believers it must have had all the freshness and the force of novelty; it was an idea which would never be out of their thoughts, it must have occupied and filled the imagination, and must have been the constant topic of their meditation, their conversation, and their correspondence. And in sitting down to write the history of Jesus, his high dignity, his divine nature, his condescension in becoming incarnate, must have been their darling theme, in comparison with which, all other topics must have been frivolous and nugatory; and if they were under a necessity of touching upon them for a time, they would continually recur to that astonishing fact, which could never be forgotten for a moment, and must ever be uppermost in their thoughts.

But how stands the fact? Observe and wonder.-Matthew, Mark and Luke, professing to write a history which should

Viz. That he came down from heaven,' that he was before Abraham,' that he and the Father are one,' that' he had glory with the Father before the world was, and all these expressions, which are now understood as asserting the pre-existence and divinity of Christ, made no particular impression upon the apostles, nor any change in their conduct to their master: a plain proof that they understood his language in a very different sense from modern Christians."

Contain all that it would be necessary to
know and believe concerning their venerat
ed Master, absolutely forget to mention the
stupendous fact, that Jesus Christ was the
living and true God, and they take no more
notice of this awful distinction than if he
were a man like themselves. And one of
these sacred historians (Luke) continues his
history for thirty years after the ascension of
Christ, and relates the travels, the labours,
the doctrine, and the success of the apostles
and first teachers of the gospel; but not a
syllable does he mention of the divinity of
Christ, or the doctrine of the trinity, and
no one would know or suspect from Luke's
history that the apostles had ever heard of
any such doctrine.
Is this credible; is it
even possible if the doctrine itself were true?
Certainly not. Let every trinitarian lay his
hand upon his heart and declare upon his
honour and in the presence of God, whether
he could himself have been guilty of such
an unpardonable omission. How then can
they believe that the evangelists would have
been so unfaithful to their trust, if they
really had it in charge to record, or if they
were even apprized of this extraordinary
event?

texts, in which it is thought that divine attributes are ascribed to Christ. And when I ask for the texts which prove the Trinity, I am referred to the form of baptism; as if baptizing into the name of a person, of Paul or Moses for example, was an acknowledgement of their divinity. I am sent to St. Paul's valediction to the Corinthians, 2 Cor. xiii. 14, that the grace of Christ, i. e. the blessings of the gospel, the love of God, and a plentiful participation of spiritual gifts, may be communicated to his Corinthian friends-and lastly, I am referred to the exploded text of the heavenly witnesses, which the good Bishop of St. David's so fondly cherishes, though never appealed to in ancient controversy till it was foisted into the catholic epistle by a notorious ecclesiastic of the fifth century, to serve as a fulcrum to his newly-invented Athanasian Creed. Upon evidence so feeble and unsatisfactory rest the amazing doctrines of the divinity of Christ and of the holy Trinity! And these detached texts being frequently cited by the advocates for these mysterious doctrines, are for that' reason believed to be of frequent occurrence in the Scriptures; and in contradiction to "Again: Jesus Christ (say they) was the most notorious fact, though not to their the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of this sincere pesuasion, they represent the New and of all worlds. This also would be a Testament as full of these mysteries from most novel and astonishing doctrine, espe- beginning to end; though it is plain that cially to Jews, who had never heard of any not a shadow of them exists in many of the Creator but God. This then is a doctrine books, and particularly in those in which which we might expect to be blazoned in we should most naturally expect to find every page of the New Testament. But them, the history of our Lord's ministry and what is the fact? It is omitted by Matthew, of the preaching of the apostles. I conclude Mark, Luke, James, Peter, and Jude, and therefore,will this man of understanding and by the apostle Paul in ten out of fourteen integrity be disposed to add, that these pasepistles. Is it possible, then, that these sages, which only occur incidentally, and writers should have given credit to this doc- which pass without comment, in whatever trine? No, No. The thought of it never way they are to be accounted for or exentered into their minds, and if it had been plained, were not and could not possibly be proposed they would have rejected it with understood, or intended, by the sacred writers, in the sense in which believers in the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity now understand and explain them, because these doctrines did not make that impression upon their minds, nor produce that visible effect in their teaching and writings, which they now do in all who receive them; and which they necessarily must and would have done in the apostles and evangelists, and their readers and hearers, if they had believed these doctrines, and if their language had been originally understood, and by them intended to be understood, in the sense in which they are now understood by those who profess the popular creed.

horror.

"And what is there, continues the man of sound understanding and honest mind with King James's version before him, to rebut these weighty considerations, and to command my assent to these astonishing and most improbable propositions, so contrary to all just conceptions of the Unity of God, so contradictory to the most explicit declarations of the Jewish Scriptures, and to the main and avowed object of the Mosaic dispensation, and so inconsistent with the general tenour of the evangelical and apostolic writings themselves, viz. that Jesus Christ is the true God, the Creator of all things, equal with the Father, and that the Father, Son, and Spirit, being three distinct persons, are only one Being, one God? I am referred indeed to one passage here, and to another there, in which it is said that Jesus Christ is called God, equal to or one with the Father; to two or three more in which he is supposed to be represented as the maker of the world; and to a few other

"The intelligent and honest inquirer armed with such considerations as these, which must, one would think, find their way to

Vigilius of Tapsum, the reputed forger of a Creed from the doctrine of which the supposed author of it would have revolted with horror.

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Review. Belsham's Reply to Burgess.

the hearts and bosoms of all who seriously and impartially seek after truth, will be little affected by curious disquisitions of learned men upon the niceties of grammatical construction, and the force of the Greek particles. He will never be persuaded that it can be necessary for him to study the bulky volumes of Hoogveen, or the more modern subtleties of Dr. Middleton, in order to learn the essential doctrines of the christian religion; which he would naturally and justly expect to find upon the front and surface, and in the general strain and tenour of the New Testament. Let him, for instance, take the text referred to by the bishop, p. 25, Tit. ii. 13, and in opposition to the common version, and to the judgment of Dr. Clarke, and other learned men, let him admit, upon the learned prelate's authority, that the true and only proper translation of the passage according to its exact grammatical construction is our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Would be from that expression conclude that the apostle was an assèrtor of the supreme divinity of his crucified master? Surely not. He would naturally argue

that, if Paul believed that Jesus Christ was the Supreme God, his mind would have been so full of the amazing doctrine that it must have shone forth in every page of his writings, in every sentence of his discourses. His delight and his duty would have been to insist continually upon this new, unheardof and astonishing theme, and to have explained the necessity and importance of it in all its bearings in the scheme of redemption. Could he under these impressions have coldly taught the Athenians that God would judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he had ordained, of which he had given assurance to all men in that he had raised him from the dead? Could he have written to the Corinthians, what indeed would hardly be reconcilable to the simplicity of truth, that as by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead?'-How then, it may be asked, is this declaration of the apostle to Titus, to be reconciled to his not acknowledging the divinity of Christ?-Upon various suppositions. It may have been a slip of the apostle's tongue in dictating; or a mistake of his amanuensis; or an error of some early transcriber; or there may be a various reading; or the words might be intended in a different sense; or the apostle might not study perfect correctness of language; or there might be some other reason which cannot now be discovered. I will give up the text as altogether inexplicable, sooner than I will believe that the apostle intended in this casual incidental manner to teach a doctrine so new, so incredible, and of such high importance, and which is so little countenanced by the general strain of his discourses and epistles, and so repugnant to the whole tenour of the Christian Scriptures." Pp. 72---83.

The learned prelate flourishes a good deal upon the celebrated passage of Tertullian, with regard to the prevalence of the Unitarian doctrine among the lower classes of believers in his own age, the idiots (idiotæ) as Bishop Horsley unluckily translated the Latin father: but all his learning and ingenuity are insufficient to deprive the Unitarians of this powerful testimony to the antiquity of their faith. In one particular, Mr. B. allows that the bishop's version of the passage is truer than his own; but this does not affect the sense of it or the argument in the slightest degree. We recommend this part of the review especially to the attention of the reader, as a specimen of sound criticism and successful reasoning.

In the Calm Inquiry, Mr. B. had expressed his disbelief in the popular theory of angels; this "heresy" is therefore charged by the bishop upon the whole body of Unitarians; but his opponent very properly explains this to be his individual opinion for which his brethren are not responsible. Unitarianism, certainly, is not involved in the reception or rejection of either a celestial or an infernal hierarchy.

In section vi. of Ch. v. Mr. B. enters largely into the character of Marcion, as connected with the question of the genuineness of the introduction to Luke's Gospel, and ably defends this calumniated "heretic," whilst at the same time he freely exposes his crude notions and censures his probable omissions, in his copy of the New Testament, of passages which did not accord with his opinions.

sion to the Unitarians is the subject of Justin Martyr's important concesthe next section, in which Mr. B. points out a palpable misrepresentation of the Martyr's language in the bishop's pamphlet, and we think clearly shews that Justin's reasoning implies that his doctrines of the preexistence and divinity of Christ were novelties. It is utterly impossible to account for Justin's language, if he held the present orthodox faith.

Judging very truly that there is not such a superabundance of evidence on behalf of the divinity of Christ that any can be spared, Bishop Burgess will not part with the notorious text of the three heavenly witnesses, 1 John v. 7, 8. His judgment upon this no longer disputed passage, is a better proof of his orthodoxy than of his