the actions of life might not be performed by the eternal Spirit when clothed with a human body, as naturally as by a created spirit; with this exception, that the perfection of an infinite Spirit must always exist unalienably in the Godhead, whatever form or humilation He may assume; although we may not be able to account for the manner of such operations, any more than we can for any of His infinity. He may assume and animate a body and continue its life, by whatever laws He may choose to fore-ordain, and at the same time be the God, the ruler and upholder of the whole universe. In short, He can do every thing, the doing of which does not imply a self-contradiction in its very nature.

I do not deny that "without controversy great is the mystery of Godliness. God was manifest in the flesh; justified in the spirit; seen of angels; preached unto the Gentiles; believed on in the world; received up into glory."* Any one can, in a few moments, ask me or any other person, questions about this mystery, which no created intelligence can answer. And forever there will be a knowledge in advance of us, which will exceed our utmost powers to comprehend. But the only way to know God at all, or to make progress in knowledge of Him, is to receive Him as revealed in the body of Christ, and by patient diligence, to persevere in our inquiries and attainments. He who rejects the divinity of Jesus can, while he remains in such unbelief, never see God. For the very first manifestation of God, must be in a form in which His infinity is obscured or concealed, and only apparent finite parts are presented to our view. And this very exhibition must also be of such a character that, while it teaches us the abhorrence of God at sin, it shall represent to us, in the strongest language, His boundless and unceasing love, together with our own iniquity and nothingness, the necessity of penitence, and the duty of faith, humility, and a child-like docility and obedience; that is to say, it must be an exhibition of the CROSS of. GOD.

The Unitarians, therefore, who deny the divinity of Christ, are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no true hope, and without God in the world.f

For in what can they hope? Is it in the moral law from mount Sinai, with its thunderings and lightnings, and terrors, to all who have not lived and shall not abide therein, with entire faithfulness? But no commandment, as I have before stated, can renew the heart

* 1 Tim. iii. 16.

† Eph. ii. 12.

by love; for a commandment, delivered to a sinful and arrogant son, by a father, of whose true nature and character the son is altogether ignorant, will never be obeyed in spirit, but will rather excite tendencies to transgression. Nevertheless, a father who intends to bring in a better hope, may wisely deliver his moral code, ordaining certain sacrifices for violations of it, that his children or people may continually have a remembrance of sin, and that by constant sacrifices under the law, they may be seen all stained with guilty blood; that "sin might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good."* For no fleshly sacrifices or ordinances, under any dispensation, annexed by way of aid to the moral law, can ever purge the conscience from dead works; else would they have ceased; for the sacrifices are for the broken law; and when the law is kept and not broken, "there is no more offering for sin." But one who is a true and diligent seeker under the moral law, assisted by these fleshly sacrifices, finding that he is prone always to prefer an instant and sensual gratification to the better impulse, which, in the midst of all our ignorance, is still striving, more or less, in the hearts of all men, at last cries out in the agony of a disturbed and alarmed conscience, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Thus is he prepared to look upon Christ, and then beholding, knowing, and loving that true exhibition of the nature, the character, and government of our heavenly Father, he is transformed to a disposition of mind which rejoices in holiness, and he keeps that perfect law, which before, while he was under fleshly ordinances, was but an incentive to sin. And now, how are Unitarians in a better hope than ancient Israel? Israel had those same commandments which the Unitarians, at present have, and in addition to them, they had the ordinances of flesh, as remembrances of sin, and if there were, in the nature of things, any such law whereby inward life might have been had, it would be this same law of Moses, as joined with Aaron. But it is impossible! Nothing can save us but a mind renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him who created us. Unitarians by rejecting Christ, attest their own ignorance of the divine nature, and while they profess to be in life, they are in death. For they trample under foot that only atonement of the blood of God, by which alone selfishness is swallowed up in universal love, and all created Rom. vii. 24. § Gal. iii. 21. || Col. iii. 10.

*Rom. vii. 5-13. + Heb. x. 18.

intelligences become joint members of one spiritual and risen body, of the infinite Jehovah.

Having already occupied much space, in treating of the principles of the Unitarians, I shall reserve what I have to say concerning Trinitarians, for the succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

TRINITARIANS.

WE come now to the second division of professing Christians, as they exist at this day, viz: those who believe that Christ had two souls, one of them the eternal God, and the other a created soul. This class I denominate Trinitarians, whether they believe in a Trinity of actual persons, or only in a Trinity of relations, principles, or actions. But, I do not use either the word Trinitarian or Unitarian, with any design to reproach the adoption of such terms, if we have right meanings attached to them. For all true Christians are Unitarian, as they believe in one God, manifested in one Christ; and yet, they are Trinitarian; for they believe that the one God, our Father, who was manifested in the one Christ, our Saviour, comes again from the second veil, or the holy of holies, without sin, as our one sanctifier and comforter.

But the words Unitarian and Trinitarian, were not adopted until the professors of our Lord were sinking under the plague of blood, and probably if the churches were restored to original purity of gospel faith, there would be no need now for the above appellations, any more than there was with the primitive Christians. Yet, possibly owing to increased knowledge, and multiplying distinctions of thought, men may choose always to retain them; for new words must be adopted as new ideas are formed. I speak not, therefore, against a right use of names or phrases; only premising that whatever terms we use, we must, or should have correct knowledge attached to them.

1

Nor by Trinitarians, as applied in this chapter, do I make any distinction between Trinitarians in the faith of actual persons, and of relations, actions, or principles merely. Because both these subdivisions of professing Christians adopt the belief that God cannot suffer, and that, therefore, the Lord Jesus had, as formerly mentioned, two souls; the Godhead and a created soul. Any of my readers may, at once, perceive that a difference of opinion between theologians, whether God is essentially one person or three persons, does not necessarily create a difference on the questions whether that one God, or that one-three God, can suffer, and whether the God-soul of Christ had not, in combination with it, a created suffering soul. If, indeed, a church has sincerely adopted the faith, that God is one, and that this one God was, and is the sole spirit of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, who had but one soul, as we ourselves have but one soul, then that church is built upon a true knowledge of the Almighty. Such a faith in our heavenly Father, from necessity begets a filial reverence and love in the bosoms of all who truly receive it, and this filiation is our new birth into the kingdom of God. Salvation is to know, to love, and to obey the Lord, as our Father. This is the whole mystery. But how can we know the God of the theologians, who is abstracted into a nonentity; how can we love a Being to whose nature our rational, voluntary, and sensitive faculties, and constitution, bear no image nor sympathy, and who cannot be touched with compassion for our infirmities, and how can obedience flow from our hearts if love and knowledge be wanting? The cross or blood of God removes, instantly, all these veils from the mind. We cannot behold that cross; we cannot see our God and Saviour placed upon it, without experiencing that our enmity is slain, and breaking out in the fervent exclamation, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."* In no other way can the knowledge and love of God be shed abroad in our hearts, and, therefore, he who rejects this faith in the blood of God, has no sonship to the Lord.

But without care you will be in danger of incurring much misapprehension of the meaning of some professing Christians, who deny the doctrine of the Trinity of actual persons, and believe the Trinity of relations only. For they talk about the sole divinity of

* Gal. vi. 14.

our Saviour; from which you might infer that they believe that He was solely God, without the union of a created spirit. But this is not their faith. By the phrase sole divinity of Christ, they mean only that the one or sole God dwelt in Him, in combination with a created soul, and not the second person of the one-three God. I repeat what I have before, in some passage, said, that I do not know of a single church in existence, by whatever name it is called, which does really believe in the sole divinity of Jesus, that is, that His spirit was God, and God only. For without exception, as I understand them, they all hold the belief that God cannot suffer, and that it was a created soul which endured the sufferings and death of the cross. The Swedenborgers, who, in my opinion, are more steeped in Platonism, and in a species of docetism, than any other denomination with which I am acquainted, teach that Christ had a suffering human or created soul, derived from His mother; but that the impassible divinity derived from His Father, so united itself to that human soul as to absorb this created soul into the Godhead, and make it one with itself as a divine unity. The Rev. R. De Charms, who is an ordaining minister of that church, while he admits this absorbing operation to be. inexplicable, attempts to illustrate it by the petrifaction of wood, whereby "stony particles are made to take the place and assume perfectly the form of the woody particles which pass off in the process; ;"*"so, (he adds,) by glorification in the Lord, a perfect divine, external human substance, form, and activity, was made to exist, instead of the humanity which He assumed from the virgin."

In Exodus xx. 25, the Lord says to Moses, "and if you will make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it." What right has any one to add to the word of God? Is there a single passage in the whole Scriptures, in which two souls of Christ are spoken of? He is called God, and the actions and government of God are ascribed to him, and to deny this, either positively or by indirection, is to violate the commandment of the Lord, and to build an altar of idolatry. To place a created soul in the temple or body of God, as the object of worship, is to seat the image of jealousy, or the abomination that makes desolate, in the holy place, where it ought not to be, and cannot fail to call down upon our heads, all the consequences of impiety.

* De Charms's Sermons, 221.