1893 From the library of Prof. A. P. PEABODY (82) Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON: PRINTED BY THURSTON, TORRY, AND CO., 31 Devonshire Street. PREFACE. THE object of the publication of the following lectures, is to give to individuals and families the means of explaining those passages of the Scriptures, which are most often quoted, to prove the doctrine of the Trinity. Such a book I believe to be wanted. There is no passage in the Bible, which expresses, or directly teaches this doctrine. This is explicitly acknowledged by the Catholic Church, the most numerous, and perhaps the most learned branch of the Church Universal. The most intelligent Catholics put it, with several other doctrines of their Church, on the ground of tradition. The Protestants, who have derived this tradition from the Catholics, and whose principles forbid them to receive any thing upon the authority of tradition, have attempted to sustain it from the Scriptures. They do not say that there is any passage which expressly asserts it, but that there are many, from which it is legitimately inferred. It is the purpose of these lectures, to take up these passages, one by one, and show that this inference is not legitimate, that no such doctrine is taught in them, even by implication, that their true. import has been mistaken. It is always objected to Unitarians, that they sustain their doctrines on the ground of reason alone. This certainly amounts to the admission, that their doctrines are more consistent with reason than those to which they are opposed. This, to say the least, is a presumption in their favor. It is the object of these lectures to show that they have both reason and Scripture on their side. By the admission of all, the current language of the Bible teaches the strictest unity of God. Taking out a few passages, there is nothing else taught. So much is the Trinity a matter of inference, even from them, that it is said, and I believe justly, that there is not one of them, which has not been given up, as proving nothing to the point, by some one of the ablest defenders of the doctrine. Those texts admit, then, in the judgments of Trinitarians themselves, of another exposition, perfectly consistent with the Unitarian faith. It is the object of these lectures to show that this exposition is the true one, not by putting any forced construction upon language, but by taking into view all those considerations which go to show what the writer meant. As it happens, almost all those passages, which are quoted to prove the Trinity, have something in them which destroys the argument which is attempted to be drawn from them. The Unitarian perceives that it is not satisfactory, especially against the testimony of the great body of the Scriptures, but he is unable definitely to point out and develope the objection. He knows better what the text does not mean, than what it does. His general convictions are not shaken. The most that can be said is, that his ignorance of sacred criticism makes certain texts perplexing, which, if he understood the whole subject, would be perfectly plain. It is the purpose of these lectures to remove this perplexity, to point out those circumstances, in the texts alleged, which show not only that they do not teach the Trinity, but do teach something else, perfectly consistent with the divine Unity. The reader will find in this book some repetition, obnoxious perhaps to literary criticism. The same texts are repeated in different connexions. This could not have been avoided, without sacrificing fulness and strength of argument to literary symmetry. The same texts are found to have an important bearing on different points of the general argument. The concluding lecture was originally one of the course, but it introduces a subject somewhat foreign to the main purpose of the book, the primitive organization of the church. It is printed in the course, on account of the illustration it contains of the meaning of the forms of baptism, and its relation to a subject at this moment deeply interesting to the public mind. |