The controversies between Arians and Athanasians, were the cause of the shedding of rivers of blood, and under one form or another, the disputes concerning the Deity of our Saviour, have divided the Churches by the most implacable discord. But in reality, what is the mighty difference between the corrupted doctrines of Unitarians and Trinitarians, which have existed for so many centuries? They both alike believe the Lord to be impassible, and incapable of actions, sentiments, and feelings, as a rational, volitive, and sensitive Spirit, upon whose exemplar we are made; they both alike believe that a created soul, performed the actions and endured the cross of Christ, and they both alike profess to believe that the fulness of the Deity upheld and sustained the weakness and imperfection of that created soul. In what do they differ? I do not mean in relation to the Trinity of persons in the Deity, but simply in relation to the Godhead of Christ. Wonderful as it may seem, the only difference between them on this point, amounts to this: Unitarians believe Christ to be a created soul, upheld by the fulness of the operation of God, who is every where essentially present; and Trinitarians also believe Christ to be a created soul, upheld by the fulness of the operation of God, who was essentially present in the body of Christ. Neither Unitarians nor Trinitarians have the least thought that the Deity endured the pains of the cross, or that he could at all sympathize with the created soul of Jesus, in its agony and humiliation. The Unitarians, under this belief in Christ, refuse to worship him, alleging him to be a creature of God, and very justly saying, that we must worship none but God; but the Trinitarians, although they believe Christ to be a created soul, do still worship him as God: if, however, they were interrogated as to their worship, I presume they would explain, that in worshipping Christ, they do not worship the created soul, but only the Godhead. Again then, I ask, in what do these two great divisions of the churches differ, except in the fact, that Unitarians exceed in supposed rationalism and Aristotelianism, and Trinitarians in mysticism and Platonism? Yet, the Athanasian and Arian wars, depending on subtle and unmeaning expressions, and scholastic jargon, (wars in which Christ is slain, and Barabbas released and chosen in his place,) arrayed armies against armies, and rent the whole professing Christian world, to its most distant extremities.

I am aware that other differences, beside the divinity of our Saviour, divide the Unitarian from some of the Trinitarian churches; for instance, the doctrine of the atonement. On this subject, also, the Unitarians have an advantage over their adversaries, who hold the doctrine of "two souls" in Christ; although both Unitarians, (as their creeds now are,) and Trinitarians, are in fatal error.

But upon the principle of the faith taught in the Bible, that Christ had but one Spirit, and that that one Spirit was and is the eternal Father and one God, you then would perceive a divine and infinite efficacy in the blood of the Lamb of God, who was prefigured by the Paschal Lamb, and by the other atoning or propitiating ordinances. For, as already exhibited, the blood of God, speaks with this voice; you can give me nothing-it is I who give myself for you, and beside me there is no Saviour; sacrifice and offering I do not desire, but an ear open to hear and obey my law of love; for the slaying of any created being, whether brute or human, to appease my wrath, is adding only sin to sin, and is of no more value than if you should offer a dog's head, or swine's blood.* Therefore, I have ordained MYSELF as the great atoning sacrifice, knowing full well, that he who accepts and applies this Lamb of God to his conscience, must know and feel these redeeming truths, viz: his own guilty murder of me; his own total inability and blindness as to all holiness; his duty of purification by baptism INTO my name or righteousness by constant faith in me, and an all-conquering love, which will quicken every power of man by the instinct of a new life, when he thus sees and acknowledges my real nature, character, and universal government, as the Father of all my children, and the redeemer and sanctifier of all my lost ones!

Unitarians as they are without this sacrifice of God, are without true religion; but Trinitarians as they have substituted a "created soul," in place of the atonement of God, are no less abhorent to the Lord. What can be more contrary to the natural or the revealed word of God, than the Trinitarian atonement! The teachers of this doctrine assure us, that the Father cannot forgive penitents, unless some righteous created soul should pay him an equivalent! God must have his pound of flesh! Some created soul who has never sinned, must take upon himself a mass of suffering, equivalent to what would have been the sufferings of all the redeemed,

*Isai. lxvi. 1-3.

had they not been saved! How unfounded! Does not our Heavenly Father expressly enjoin upon us, the free forgiveness of our enemies; and does He then inculcate upon us, a higher and more excellent holiness, than He Himself possesses or can practice? No. Freely in His grace, does he abundantly give us all things; and we have a constant advocate in His own bosom, His undying love, which will never cease, until He shall have brought the entire universe of His rational creation to knowledge and happiness.

Neither will He at all tolerate the infliction of death or suffering upon an innocent being, as a bribe, or an equivalent in the place of justice. All souls are His. "The soul that sinneth it shall die."* No one shall bear the iniquity of another; but "the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked, shall be upon him";† and each one shall be judged, according to his own ways. When we repent, and cast away our transgressions, and are renewed in spirit by a knowledge and love of God, then our heavenly Parent freely, for His own sake, forgives our iniquity, remembers our sins no more, and adopts us into His family. But no created, being has paid Him for the evil of sin. God Himself is the Lamb slain and in the blood of atoning love, He makes us clean upon this love, as upon a scape-goat under the Levitical ordinances, He puts our sins, and bears them away to a distant land, no more to be remembered against us.

In fact, if Unitarians thought that the vicarious sacrifice of a created soul, were necessary to the doctrine of the atonement, they could incorporate that principle upon their system, as well as the Trinitarians. So also could the advocates of a Trinity of relations, as well as those who believe in a Trinity of actual persons in the divine nature. For the Lord in one relation, may pay Himself a debt due to Himself in another relation, and a created soul might be sustained, both in perfect obedience and in agonizing suffering, by the omnipresence and fulness of the operation of the Deity in Christ, equally under the Unitarian scheme, as by the Trinitarian. But this whole plan of a vicarious obedience, agony, and payment, by a created soul, for the sins of the world, is, in my apprehension, as foreign to the truth and spirit of Christianity, as darkness is from light.

Thus have I submitted my views concerning the creeds of all the churches now in existence: for Catholic and Protestant, Epis

*Ezek. xviii. 4.

Read the whole of Ezekiel xviii.

copalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, or by whatever name or sectarianism distinguished, they all alike reject the sole divinity of the spirit of Christ. If there should be any church, which does not make this a point in their creed, but who profess that they believe all that the Bible says of Christ, without knowing or understanding what that is, they are no less aliens from God than the others: for we are not saved by ignorance, but by knowledge.

The Bible doctrine is this: CHRIST HAD AND HAS BUT ONE SOUL; AND THAT ONE SOUL, IS THE ONE AND ONLY GOD AND FATHER. This true doctrine of God in Christ, is the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, which is to smite and break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold of the present apostate churches, and corrupt national dynasties, and introduce a new heaven and earth, or new spiritual and political conditions, in place of the existing state of things: for the great day of the wrath of the Lord is come, and the present establishments will become like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors,* and be carried away.

Since then, the knowledge of God lies at the very foundation of salvation, and is the great corner stone upon which our stability is made to rest, I purpose, in the succeeding chapter, in the form of objections and answers, to remove whatever I have heard alleged, or that I can anticipate, in relation to the doctrine of the created soul of Christ. The unspeakable importance of this subject requires that we should, by all means, know it aright. By the objections, it will be understood, that I speak the sentiments of all persons whatever, whether Unitarians or Trinitarians, who affirm either that the soul of Christ was solely a created spirit, or that it was a created spirit, conjoined with the Godhead. By the answers, I state my own opinions, proofs, and arguments. I prefer thus to exhibit the whole subject in one connected view; because by going over these topics, the mind of a thinking person will be put upon a train of examination for himself; and such is now the absence of all free and unbiassed consideration of the doctrine of the Godhead of our Lord, that, plain as the subject, under the revelation in the divine word, really is, it has become a mystery and a darkness. Men are afraid to stand upright, and to walk. They grope for the

* Dan. ii. 34, 35.

wall as the blind, that they may feel their way by an outward hold, and they rejoice when some popular creed or tradition of ecclesiastical authority takes them by the hand to lead them. My earnest desire is to awake them from this fatal lethargy, and to arouse them to life and action.

CHAPTER VII.

OBJECTIONS AND ANSWERS.

Objection 1. The Scriptures call Christ, a man-"the man Christ Jesus." 1 Tim. ii. 5.

Answer. They do so; but they expressly say, "the second man is the Lord from heaven." 1 Cor. xv. 47.

Objection 2. They speak this of the Godhead which dwelt bodily in Him; for Christ had two souls: the Godhead, and a created soul. He is called man as well as God. Nothing can be a man, which has not a man's soul, and a man's soul, (in other words, a human soul,) means a created soul.

Answer. In interpreting the Scriptures, we must use scriptural words, in the sense in which the holy Spirit employs them. There are two senses, in which the Scriptures use the term "man.' 1st. The word "man," means merely an organized body of flesh, like our outward body, without life, and this is the primal sense. Thus it is said, "And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground."* The mere earthly body, is here called man; for the text afterward states, God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and MAN became a living soul." In the next chapter, the Lord says to Adam, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." We here see, that the primal sense of the term man, is a mere earthly body of flesh, organized in a certain form. For the human spirit is not dust, nor does it return to dust. Ecclesiastes recognizes this truth; for his words are, "Then, (at death,) shall the DUST (or body) return