fess obedience to the word of Christ to overlook the explanation he has here so clearly given of the nature of the unity existing between him and the Father.

CREED OF TERTULLIAN.

Messrs Editors-In your number for January, I noticed some interesting and useful remarks concerning Tertullian. The writer of those remarks appears to have overlooked what has always struck me as the most remarkable and important passage in all the writings of that eminent Father. In his work 'De Præscript. Hæret. part. xiii,' he declares and defines his own faith and that of the Orthodox of his day in the following creed.

'There is one, and only one God. He alone created the world. This Being formed the universe out of nothing, by the instrumentality of his word, which proceeded forth from him, the first of all derived beings(verbum suum primo omnium demissum.) This word called his Son, appeared variously to the Patriarchs under the name of God (in nomine Dei ;) its voice was always heard by the Prophets. It was afterwards brought down by the spirit and energy of God the Father (postremo delatum se spiritu Patris Dei et virtute) into the virgin Mary; it became flesh, or a human being, in her womb, and proceeded from her as Jesus

Christ. Afterwards he promulgated a new law, and a new promise of the kingdom of the Heavens; he practised and developed the virtues(virtutes egisse); was crucified; rose again on the third day; was taken up into the Heavens, and seated at the right hand of the Father; and sent down in his stead, the power of the holy spirit, which actuates believers. He will come in conspicuous glory, to take up the holy to the enjoyment of life eternal, and of the celestial rewards, and to adjudge the unholy to perpetual fire, both which descriptions of persons having, in the first place, been raised again to life, and reunited to their bodies.'

This creed is remarkable in several points of view. It is entirely destitute of allusion to the doctrine of the atonement, and contains not the least sign or mark of the distinctive doctrines of Calvinism. We look in vain for what are called the peculiar doctrines of the gospel. In searching it from beginning to end we catch no glimpse of the doctrine of the trinity. It declares on the contrary the unity of God. It asserts that Christ, or the word, was created in time, (primo omnium ;) that he derived his being from God the Father; that he came to establish a new law, to proclaim new promises and to influence us by practising the virtues, that is, to be our example. Finally, I would remark that the account given in this creed of the holy spirit, is substantially the same with that presented by unitarian interpreters, that is, the spirit which actuates believing and faithful Christians. As long as this creed can be adduced, it will be impossible to accuse of heresy, or con

sistently to deny the christian name, to those who do not believe in the trinity of Athanasius or the dogmas of Calvin, without at the same time denouncing Tertullian as a heretic and infidel.* Indeed the above formulary is demonstrative evidence that these unscriptural theories had not been admitted to the creed of the church in the days of this orthodox Father. U.

Judged according to the standard set up by the Exclusionists of the present day, all christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ would share the fate of modern Unitarians, and with them be struck off from the list of Christians. The attempt to save Tertullian would be hopeless. He could not stand the test a moment. His writings are full of expressions, which either directly assert, or plainly imply that the son is inferior to the Father, and distinct from him. We might fill page after page with such expressions. His current language cannot by the most ingenious sophistry be made to favor the modern hypothesis of the trinity. He contends that the assertion the Father is greater than 1,' is strictly and literally true; and observes very justly that he who begets is different from him who is begotten, and he who sends from him who is sent; before all things, he says God was alone, and God is the head of Christ, and all things were given or subjected to the son by the Father. His writings we say, abound with expressions of such or similar import. It is true, he calls Christ God, but he must have read the Fathers to very little purpose, who does not know that, in applying this term to Christ they had no intention of identifying him with the One Supreme Being. They supposed that he derived in some sort a divine nature from God, and in virtue of possessing such a nature was entitled to be called God in an inferior sense. They constantly,however,assert. ed the supremacy of the Father as the one true and only true God. -Ed.

OUR SAVIOUR'S DISTRESS IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. MATTH. XXVI, 36-42.

THIS is a scene of deep and bitter agony, described with slight variations, by all the four Evangelists. It is a story of affecting interest to every Christian, and has often occasioned perplexity and distress to serious minds. As the son of God, the visible representative of the unseen Jehovah, made known to us in these distant ages by the records of his unearthly power and wisdom, and revered as one empowered by the Almighty to save mankind from sin and ruin, we are apt to regard him as a being wholly above mortal passion and mortal fear.

Some Christians, unwilling to believe that the blessed Jesus could suffer like a common man, as if this could impair the dignity of his character, have given a strange and far sought explanation of this scene of anguish. They have declared that, at this awful moment, when he prayed that the cup might pass from him, when the intenseness of his agony wrung the heavy damps from his frame, even then it was no mortal suffering, which weighed down his spirit, it was no instinctive recoil of nature at the certain aproach of a cruel and infamous death. They choose to impute it to the vengeance of an angry God, justly due to a guilty world, condensed to one burning point, and hurled with measureless and blasting power on this innocent and holy victim! They suppose that the mercy of God consists, not in par

doning freely the returning penitent, but in punishing the innocent instead of the guilty. But we have not so learned the character of our heavenly Father. We can see no mercy, and no justice, in the power which inflicts torture on the innocent that the guilty may go free. We need not have recourse to this shocking fiction to explain the sufferings of Jesus on that fearful night.

I shall proceed to point out something in his character, and something in his circumstances, that might wring from him those strong expressions of anguish and those earnest prayers for deliverance.

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First, in his character. We are to consider him not only as the Messiah, but as a man- a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.' It was necessary that the captain of our salvation should be made perfect through suffering,' that we who come after him might know from his example how to drink of his bitter cup of affliction and share in his own baptism of sorrow. His example is the more powerful, and our love the more ardent, because he is an intelligible beingone of like passions with ourselves, whose sufferings in our cause we can understand and appreciate, and to whom we can be united in feelings and sympathies. We are encouraged by the devotion and the example of an 'High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, who was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin.'

I said that he was a man of sorrows. He was not indeed disposed to cast a gloomy shade over the inno